Abstract
Composite materials such as sandwich panels have been employed in many structural applications. The elastic parameters of sandwich panels are essential for the structural analysis. Also, an inverse analysis method has already been proposed by one of the authors to identify the core elastic parameters of sandwich panels using the FEM eigenvalue analysis and the sensitivity analysis. The purpose of this study is to present the analytical model of a sandwich panel that has core of strict geometrical shape and to identify the equivalent elastic parameters of a core material. First, by applying the experimental modal analysis technique to a sandwich panels with free boundary conditions, natural frequencies and mode shapes are obtained. Next, considering the obtained natural frequencies and mode shapes of the sandwich panel, the elastic parameters of the core material are identified using the presented analytical model of the sandwich panel and the inverse analysis method.
