Large deflections of functionally graded sandwich beams with influence of homogenization schemes

Abstract

Functionally graded materials (FGMs) are increasingly used in sandwich construction to improve mechanical performance of structures. The effective material properties used in modelling FGM structures, however, are dependent on a chosen homogenization scheme. For the first time, the influence of different homogenization schemes on large deflections of dual-phase FGM sandwich beams is studied in this paper by using a nonlinear finite element procedure.