Analytical solution of some delamination scenarios in thick structural sandwich plates

The first-, second- and third-order shear deformation plate theories are applied in this work to model thick rectangular sandwich plates with through-width delamination. The models are based on the concept of the four equivalent single layers and the system of exact kinematic conditions. Three different scenarios are considered: the failure of the core, the delamination between the top facesheet and the core, and finally, the case when the delamination takes place in the local midplane of the top facesheet. A general model is derived and applied to sandwich plates with Lévy type boundary conditions. The governing equations are summarized and the state-space model of the system is created. The mechanical fields are calculated and compared to finite element results. The comparison shows that the first-order sandwich plate model is inaccurate, on the other hand, the second- and third-order theories capture very well the mechanical fields compared to finite element results. The J-integral distribution is also calculated along the delamination front and it is concluded that the third- and second-order models give very good approximations of the results by finite element analysis and the virtual crack closure technique.