Load-bearing characteristics of marine complex sandwich composites considering unequal elastic modulus in tension and compression

The panel and core materials of sandwich composite usually have the characteristics of unequal elastic modulus in tension and compression. However, in the numerical calculation of sandwich composite, it is usually considered as the material with the same tensile modulus or compression modulus, which often leads to larger calculation errors. The test results show that when the elastic modulus of tension and compression is about 10 times different, the maximum calculated stress and maximum deflection will be more than twice different. In view of the complexity of sandwich composite structure, based on the bi-modulus model of laminated plates, a simplified theoretical formula and numerical calculation method are proposed for bi-modulus sandwich composite structures in this paper. Furthermore, the accuracy of the proposed numerical calculation method of bi-module is verified by the experimental study of composite single-layer plate structure and sandwich composite cabin structure. The results show that the error between the improved numerical calculation method and the experimental measurement results is basically within 6%. Meanwhile, the numerical method based on field variables has wide application range and high convergence, and can be used to calculate complex marine composite structures.