Transverse stretching vibration analysis of cross-ply composite and sandwich beams by means of an equivalent single-layer theory

Due to largely different stiffness between the face sheets and the core, the vibration modes corresponding to the transverse stretching displacement will occur in the sandwich plates. The third-order models will encounter difficulty to reasonably produce these frequencies corresponding to transverse stretching displacement modes, which will influence engineering design. Therefore, a global-local higher-order theory including transverse stretching effect has been proposed to study transverse stretching vibration, which can meet in advance the continuity conditions and the free surface conditions of transverse shear stresses. In the light of Hamilton's principle, the equation of motion is presented, and analytical solutions of the simply-supported beams can be acquired by using Navier's technique. In order to verify the capability of the proposed model, free vibration of composite beams is firstly investigated and the results have been compared to two-dimensional elasticity solutions. After the proposed model is assessed by two-dimensional elasticity solutions, the proposed model is extended to study dynamic behaviors corresponding to the transverse stretching displacement vibration modes, which will be verified by utilizing the three-dimensional finite element (3 D-FEM). Furthermore, variation of natural frequencies of the sandwich beams is also investigated by altering the thickness of the face sheets, which can further illustrate the capability of the proposed model.