Failure behavior of hierarchical corrugated sandwich structures with second-order core based on Mindlin plate theory

For hierarchical corrugated sandwich structures with second-order core, the prediction error of failure behavior by existing methods becomes unacceptable with the increase of structure thickness. In this study, a novel analytical model called moderately thick plate model is developed based on Mindlin plate theory, which can be used to analyze the failure behavior of hierarchical corrugated structures with second-order core under compression or shear loads. Then, the analytical expressions of nominal stress for six competing failure modes are derived based on the moderately thick plate model. The results of six different unit structures based on the moderately thick plate model agree quite well the ones by finite element methods. Furthermore, the influence of different structure thicknesses is investigated to validate the applicability of the moderately thick plate model. According to the comparative results with the thin plate model, the proposed moderately thick plate model has a better precision with the increase of the ratio of thickness to width for failure components.