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PARAMETRIC STUDY OF SANDWICH PANEL BUCKLING IN COMPOSITE WIND TURBINE BLADES
Shicong Miao, Steven Donaldson, and Elias Toubia
Figure 3. ABAQUS result for high aspect ratio curved-section sandwich panel model a) with no rigid ends and b) rigid ends included
Closed Form Solution Validation
The flat-section model result was validated by the closed form solutions
provided by Allen(Allen, 1969) for orthotropic sandwich panels(valid
for flat plates only). The infinitely long curved plate solution for
isotropic plates was found in Gambhir (Gambhir, 2004).
Since the S4R element in ABAQUS is a soft shell element, rigid ends
were required in the sandwich panel models to get more accurate
buckling eigenvalues. The validated results can be seen in Figure 4.
The core transverse shear moduli, G 13 and G 23 , are studied because they
are the core properties that have the most significant effect on panel
buckling (Toubia, 2008). As shown in Figure 4, for a core with high
transverse shear modulus G 13 , the FEA result and analytical solutions
converge. When the core shear modulus is too low, the local skin
buckling wrinkling mode is dominant. As shown in Table 1, the lowest
shear modulus studied has a value of G 13 of 20 MPa (less than a 5%
deviation from the closed form solution), while the highest had a value
of 250 (essentially no deviation).
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