Buckling of carbon fiber composite pyramidal truss core sandwich columns

This paper deals with the theoretical prediction of global buckling loads for carbon fiber composite pyramidal truss core sandwich columns. Different from thin plate structures, transverse shear effect can not be neglected for sandwich structures. In addition, the attributes of the laminated face sheets are considered in the present paper. A zig-zag displacement approximation is made. Based on the principle of minimum potential energy, equilibrium equations and boundary conditions are derived via the variational method. The critical buckling loads under various boundary conditions are presented. In order to validate the reasonableness of the equivalent-core method, the strain energies stored in the actual discrete truss members and the equivalent continuous homogenous core layer are calculated respectively and compared, and a good agreement is obtained. The proposed analytical method is verified by comparing with the published theoretical predictions and experimental results.