Return to search

Numerical simulation of elastic wave propagation in honeycomb core sandwich plates

Honeycomb core sandwich panels are widely used in the aeronautic industry due to their excellent flexural stiffness to weight ratio. Generally, classical homogenized model is used to model honeycomb core sandwiches in order to have an efficient but not expensive numerical modeling. However, previous works have shown that, while the homogenized models could correctly represent the membrane waves' behavior of sandwiches in a large frequency range, they could not give satisfying simulation results for the flexural waves' behavior in the high frequency range (HF). In fact, the honeycomb core layer plays an important role in the propagation of the flexural waves, so that when the involved wavelengths become close to the characteristic lengths of honeycomb cells, the cellular microstructure starts interacting strongly with the waves and its effect should no longer be neglected, which is unfortunately not the case of the homogenized models. In the present work, we are interested in improving the theoretical and numerical analysis of HF elastic waves' propagation in honeycomb core sandwich panels by a numerical approach based on the Bloch wave theorem, which allows taking into account the periodic characteristics of the honeycomb core. In fact, by decomposing non-periodic wave solutions into their periodic Bloch wave basis modes, numerical models are defined on a basic cell and solved in a efficient way, and provide a better description and so a better understanding of the interaction between HF wave propagation phenomena and the periodic structures. Our numerical approach is developed and validated in the cases of one-dimensional periodic beam structures, of two-dimensional periodic hexagonal and rectangular beam structures and of honeycomb core sandwich plates. By solving the eigenvalue problem of the Bloch wave modes in one primitive cell of the periodic structure for all the wave vectors located in the corresponding first Brillouin zone in the phase space, the dispersion relation between the wave vector and the eigenvalue is calculated. The analysis of the dispersion relation provides important results such as: the frequency bandgaps and the anisotropic and dispersive characteristics of periodic structures, the comparison between the first Bloch wave modes to those of the classical equivalent homogenized models and the existence of the retro-propagating Bloch wave modes with a negative group velocity.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:CCSD/oai:tel.archives-ouvertes.fr:tel-01064030
Date17 September 2012
CreatorsTian, Biyu
PublisherEcole Centrale Paris
Source SetsCCSD theses-EN-ligne, France
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypePhD thesis

Page generated in 0.0021 seconds