Analysis of propagation of waves of purely shear deformaton in a sandwich plate

This paper addresses propagation of waves of purely shear deformation in an unbounded sandwich plate composed of two identical isotropic skin plies and an isotropic core ply. To capture propagation of these waves, a three-dimensional formulation of the theory of elasticity (‘refined theory’) and a two-dimensional formulation of the sandwich plate ‘elementary’ theory are used as ‘starting points’ for the analysis. ‘In-phase’ and ‘anti-phase’ waves (with respect to in-plane deflections of skins) are considered independently of each other. For both types of motion, dispersion curves obtained by use of ‘elementary’ theory are compared with those obtained by use of the ‘exact’ theory (which involves the theory of elasticity in description of wave motion in a core ply). It is shown that the simplified models suggested are capable of giving an accurate description of propagating waves.