Minimum Weight Sandwich Beam Design

thin compared with the core, i.e., f/c<^ 1. The faces resist the longitudinal loads and the core resists the transverse load. It is assumed that the shear stress in the core is constant across its depth. The governing equations for sandwich beams can be written in terms of partial deflections wb and ws. wb is the deflection of the sandwich beam due to bending only, it occurs if Gc, the shear modulus of the core, is infinite. ws is the deflection of the sandwich beam due to shear deformation of its core, it occurs if £/, the Young's modulus of the face, is infinite. Huang2 presents a detailed development of partial deflections. The total deflection w is the sum of partial deflections wb and ws.