2015 ANSYS Convergence Conference

Bangalore, May 15, 2015

ITC Gardenia

Predicting transverse shear stress on core material of the composite

sandwich plates
Santhosh Kumar M, Deepak Negi, Gopi Krishna, Sundaresan P and Prasantha U
Infosys Limited, Bangalore, India

1. Abstract
Composite laminate and Sandwich plates are widely used in aerospace and other industries due
to its specific strength and specific stiffness characteristics. In a typical composite sandwich
plate construction, face sheets take majority of the bending and in-plane loads and the sandwich
core takes the shear loads. The sandwich core materials are having very low allowable
compared to that of the face sheets. Core is expected to fail under shear mode, due to through
thickness transverse shear stress.
An attempt is made through series of ANSYS simulation to understand the good modelling
approach to predict the transverse shear stress in the core of a sandwich plate. A study is
conducted here to understand the sensitivity of the number of elements used in the through
thickness direction. A comparison is also made between solid and shell element modelling
approaches. This study addresses three questions 1) Why is the shear stress constant in the
core? 2) Is solid or shell elements good to model sandwich structures for transverse shear
prediction? 3) If modelled using solid elements how many elements required through
thickness?
2. Nomenclature of the composite sandwich construction
A typical composite sandwich plate consists of face sheets (composite laminate) at top and
bottom and a low density core in between. The core is boned to face sheets with adhesive
material as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Honeycomb plate structure: Ref -1

2015 ANSYS Convergence Conference

Bangalore, May 15, 2015

ITC Gardenia

Face sheets can be fabricated by arranging the plies at designed orientation as shown in Figure
2 to achieve the desired directional properties.

Figure 2: Face sheet orientations: Ref-1

Core material exhibit 3D anisotropic behaviour. The core material has very low Youngs
modulus in the in-plane direction and has considerable Youngs modulus in through thickness
direction.

Figure 3: Core orientations: Ref- 2

2015 ANSYS Convergence Conference

Bangalore, May 15, 2015

ITC Gardenia

Sandwich plate as a structure can fail due to the failure of the skin and / or failure of the core.
Honeycomb core under transverse loads can fail due to core shear and core crush.

Figure 4: Core failure modes: Ref 2

3. Introduction to the Problem Studied

A typical Finite Element Model of a cantilevered composite sandwich plate construction with
a tip load of 1000 N is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 : Typical composite sandwich plate considered for study

The face sheets are considered as made from carbon fibre fabric with following typical material
properties
E1 = E2 = 62000 MPa, E3 = 8500 MPa
G12 = G23 = G13 = 4200 MPa
12 = 0.05, 23 = 13 = 0.35
3

2015 ANSYS Convergence Conference

Bangalore, May 15, 2015

ITC Gardenia

The core is made of Nomex material with following material properties

E3 = 130 MPa
G13 (L) = 185 MPa
G23 (W) = 90 MPa
The core has very negligible inplane normal (E1, E2) and shear (G12) values. The Poissons
ratios of the sandwich core are assumed to be zero. There is no coupling between normal and
shear strains. Hence these property values are not generally provided by the manufactures. The
thickness direction compressive modulus E3 is input as Ez, ribbon direction (L) through
thickness shear modulus is input as Gxz and expansion direction (W) through thickness shear
modulus is input as Gyz. The core stiffness in all other directions is assumed to be zero. In
order to avoid the other diagonal stiffness terms of the 3D anisotropic constitutive matrix
becoming zero (which cause numerical issues while inverting the stiffness matrix) in-plane
normal (E1, E2) and shear (G12) values are kept as unity.
4. Meshing consideration
It is generally known that in order to capture the stress correctly under bending dominated
loading four elements are required through thickness direction. Since the study model under
consideration is dominated by bending load, face sheets and core are meshed with four
elements through the thickness as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Solid mesh of a sandwich plate

2015 ANSYS Convergence Conference

Bangalore, May 15, 2015

ITC Gardenia

5. Discussion of Analysis and Results

Four different studies are conducted in search of the answers to following 3 questions
1) Why is the transverse shear stress constant across the core?
2) Is solid or shell elements good to model sandwich structures?
3) If core modelled using solid elements how many elements required through thickness?

5.1. Study-1
It is assumed that both face sheets and core are made from same isotropic material and
transverse shear stress Sxz at the middle of the plate (location A shown in Figure 6) is plotted
in Figure 7. The purpose of this study is to make sure that the number of elements required in
the thickness direction to capture the through thickness transverse shear stress for an isotropic
material.
The variation of the transverse shear stress Sxz through thickness is parabolic as expected.
Refining the mesh at the core from 4 to 10 elements through thickness, the parabolic variation
is captured more smoothly. However, in practical point of view using 4 elements through
thickness is sufficient.
Having established that the 4 elements through thickness is sufficient to capture the parabolic
through thickness transverse shear stress distribution with reasonable engineering accuracy
further studies are done using 4 elements through thickness.
For graphing the purpose, the transverse shear stress is normalized with average shear stress.
Sxz-ave = F/A = 1000/ (50x (10+1+1)) = 1000/ (50x12) =1.67 MPa

Figure 7: Transverse shear stress in Isotropic material for 4 and 10 elements through thickness

2015 ANSYS Convergence Conference

Bangalore, May 15, 2015

ITC Gardenia

5.2. Study-2
The stiffness difference between the face sheets and core is introduced still keeping the material
model as isotropic. The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of differential stiffness
between face sheet and core.
The Youngs modulus of the core is scaled by the ratio between the shear modulus of the face
sheet and core material.
=

Where subscript f corresponds to face sheet and c corresponds to core.

The distribution of transverse shear stress is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Transverse shear stress in Isotropic material: Differential stiffness for face sheets and
core

From Figure 8, it can be seen that core is taking most of the shear load and the face sheets take
no shear. An important point to note here is that the transverse shear stress distribution is
changed from the parabolic shape to almost constant value due to the differential stiffness
values considered between the core and the face sheets.
For graphing purpose, once again the transverse shear stress is normalized with the average
shear stress
Sxz-ave = F/A = 1000/ (50x (10+1+1)) = 1000/ (50x12) =1.67 MPa

2015 ANSYS Convergence Conference

Bangalore, May 15, 2015

ITC Gardenia

Having understood the impact of differential stiffness on transverse shear stress distribution,
further studies are done on the actual sandwich material model.

5.3. Study-3
The face sheets and core are modelled using 3D orthotropic material properties. The purpose
of this study is to capture the transverse shear stress distribution in actual core material using
the solid elements.
The distribution of transverse shear stress is shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Transverse shear stress in orthotropic sandwich plate

From Figure 9, it can be seen that the transverse shear stress in the core is constant, no more
parabolic. All the shear load is taken only by the honeycomb core.
For graphing purpose, the transverse shear stress for orthotropic case is normalized with the
average shear stress. Note that only half of the face sheet thickness is considered for shear area,
similar to text book calculation.
Sxz-ave = F/A = 1000/ (50x (10+0.5+0.5)) = 1000/ (50x11) =1.82 MPa.
The reason for constant transverse shear stress in core is looked at 3D material constitutive
model point of view. The stress tensors in a material under 3D stress state is shown in Figure
10.
Under the absence of body forces, the equilibrium of forces due to internal stress system can
be written as;
;

+
+
=0

+
+
=0

2015 ANSYS Convergence Conference

Bangalore, May 15, 2015

ITC Gardenia

+
+
=0

Figure 10: General 3D stress tensors

For 3D orthotropic material model for core; the in-plane stiffness of the core in normal and
shear direction are assumed to be zero in the 3D orthotropic material input. Which implies that
= = = 0
;

+
+
=0

+
+
=0

+
+
=0

The variation of transverse shear stress with respect to thickness

is zero, meaning

these stresses do not vary with thickness i.e constant.

This justifies and validates the constant transverse shear stress observed in the Figure 9. Since
the transverse shear stress is constant across the core, using one solid elements across the core
thickness is sufficient to capture of transverse shear stress.

5.4. Study-4
The face sheets and core are modelled using shell elements in this study. The material model
used is 3D orthotropic. The purpose of this study is to compare the solid and shell modelling
approaches.

2015 ANSYS Convergence Conference

Bangalore, May 15, 2015

ITC Gardenia

Figure 11: Transverse shear stress in orthotropic Shell element model

It can be seen from Figure 11 that the Shell element modelling (shown with thickness
visualisation) of the sandwich plate exactly predicts the transverse shear stress as that of 3D
solid modelling. Shell model has 6300 active DOFs to be solved, whereas the solid model has
8580 model to be solved. The ratio of the active DOF can be significant in large models and
thus the solution time. However, when the solid model is meshed with one element through
thickness there would not be much difference in DOFs.
It is recommended that shell element modelling is sufficient to capture the transverse shear
stress in the core.

6. Conclusion
The suitable FE modelling approach to predict the transverse shear stress in the composite
sandwich plate is studied through series of ANSYS simulation. This study focused only on
predicting transverse shear stress in the core material. The shear stress on the core is constant,
can be effectively predicted through shell element modelling. One or two elements through the
thickness is sufficient to capture the constant transverse shear stress in the core when there is
requirement to model using solid elements.

7. References
1. Michale C.Y. Niu, Airframe stress analysis and sizing, second edition, 2001.
2. Petras, M.P.F. Sutcliffe, Failure mode maps for honeycomb sandwich panels,
Composite Structures 44 (1999) 237-252.