Edgewise compression behavior of honeycomb sandwich structures

An analytical solution and numerical models are proposed for the buckling and post-buckling behavior of honeycomb sandwich structures under edgewise compression. General buckling and core crushing due to transverse shear are observed in the experiment. Based on these phenomena, the von Kármán plate theory are employed for the analysis for the buckling behavior and the analytical solution for the core under transverse shear are obtained for predicting the failure of the sandwich structures. Comparison between these solutions and the experiments shows that the imperfection of pre-bending deformation significantly affects the ultimate load for the sandwich structures, resulting the failure before the compression reaches the critical load for general buckling. Moreover, parameters such as core geometries, asymmetry face sheets are under discussions for the load carrying capacity of the specimens.