Thermal stress analysis of sandwich structures

Significant thermal and interlaminar transverse stresses often occur in sandwich structures subjected to thermal loading due to the mismatch in thermal expansion of different materials in structures. A kind of 32-node, 3-layered shell element with relative degrees-of-freedom accompanied by a post-processing method is presented based on 3D FEM to accurately describe thermo-structures behavior and easily connected with brick elements. The present method is verified by a theoretical result. The thermal stress fields in a sandwich cylinder with a cutout with and without reinforcement are calculated by the method successfully. The results show that reinforcement may cause significant transverse thermal stresses, although it is beneficial to reducing in-plane stress.