Analysis of sandwich plates with unbalanced cross-ply faces

The analysis of rectangular sandwich plates constructed of an orthotropic core and unbalanced cross-ply face plates is presented. A double Fourier series approach is used for simply supported sandwich plates under lateral loads. Results are compared to the corresponding sandwich plate results with orthotropic faces. The results indicate that the effect of bending-membrane coupling depends mainly upon the relative thicknesses of the core and faces; other factors include the shear stiffnesses of the core, the degree of anisotropy of the individual plies, the total number and lay-up of plies in the faces and the aspect ratio of the plate.