Investigation of bending and buckling behaviors of foam core sandwich plates

Sandwich plates are formed by placing thick and light core material between thin and rigid wall layers at the bottom and top. Foam core sandwich plates are widely used in buildings. In this study, bending and buckling behavior of foam core sandwich plates with simply supported on four sides having different face and core materials were analyzed using the ANSYS Workbench 2020 R2 finite element package program. The examined plates were loaded with a uniformly distributed load perpendicular to the plate plane for bending behavior and parallel to the plate plane for buckling behavior. A three-dimensional solid element is used as a finite element. In the study, the effects of three different parameters, namely layer thickness, face material and core material, were investigated. In order to examine the effect of layer thickness, 11 different foam core sandwich plates were designed by changing the ratio of core thickness to face thickness between 9 and 7 in constant thickness plates. Two different face materials, steel and aluminum, were used to investigate the face material effect, and five different PVC core materials, H200, H60, Airex R63.80, Airex R82.110 and CoreLite 100, were used to investigate the core material effect. Depending on these parameters, the bending and buckling behaviors of 110 different foam core sandwich plates were examined and the obtained results were presented in tables and graphics. Keywords: ANSYS, foam core sandwich plate, bending behavior, mid-point deflection, buckling behavior.