Theoretical and Experimental Analysis of Dissymmetrical Sandwich Plates with Compressible Core

Abstract

The design of some modern ultra-light weight aicraft or helicopter structures uses the dissymmetrical sandwich technology. In this kind of design, stresses are taken by the thick skin of the sandwich known as working skin and made of multilayered carbon. The behaviour with global buckling is fulfilled by the core and a thin skin known as stabilizing skin made of two carbon or Kevlar layers. The certification of such structures rests partly on monoaxial tests in compression or shear with deformable square of representative test plates, or on tests under complex stresses of complete substructures. The purpose of this study is on one hand to build an original way of testing which would be able to test representative plates under uniaxial compression, shear and combined compression/shear loading, and on the other hand to build a specific non-linear theory with the associated program able to describe the behaviour of the real plates.