Buckling Analysis of Debonded Sandwich Panel Under Compression

A sandwich panel with initial through-the-width debonds is analyzed to study the buckling of its faceskin when subject to an in-plane compressive load. The debonded faceskin is modeled as a beam on a Winkler elastic foundation in which the springs of the elastic foundation represent the sandwich foam. The Rayleigh-Ritz and finite-difference methods are used to predict the critical buckling load for various debond lengths and stiffnesses of the sandwich foam. The accuracy of the methods is assessed with a plane-strain finite-element analysis. Results indicate that the elastic foundation approach underpredicts buckling loads for sandwich panels with isotropic foam cores.