Dynamic buckling of flat and curved sandwich panels with transversely compressible core

In the present study, the effect of the transverse compressibility of the core on the transient dynamic response of structural sandwich panels under rapid loading conditions is investigated. The analysis is based on a higher-order sandwich shell theory in an effective multilayer formulation. The model is based on the standard Kirchhoff–Love hypothesis for the face sheets whereas a first/second order power series expansion is employed for the core. Consistent equations of motion and boundary conditions are derived by means of Hamilton’s principle. An analytical solution is obtained by an extended Galerkin procedure. The theory is applied to the dynamic buckling and postbuckling analyses of plane and curved sandwich panels subjected to rapidly applied tangential and transverse loads. It is observed that the transverse compressibility of the core can have distinct effects on both, the frequency and the amplitudes of the resulting free oscillations. Due to interactions between the overall oscillation and a local oscillation in the presence of a face wrinkling instability mode, the dynamic response can be chaotic, resulting in oscillating face wrinkling instability modes with unpredictable amplitudes.