Optimal design of sandwich panels made of wood veneer hollow cores

In response to the growing interest in replenishable, lightweight, stiff and strong materials, a novel sandwich panel with a hollow core has been manufactured using commercially produced 3-ply veneer. In this paper, the out-of-plane shear behaviour of the novel hollow core is analysed and the expressions for the failure loads are developed. A strength-based optimisation problem is formulated for predicting the optimum values of the panel dimensions that would produce minimum panel weight when subjected to bending. It has been found that the minimum weight, as predicted by the full four-parameter optimisation, is slightly lower than that obtained by using the closed form expressions derived on the basis of simplified three-parameter optimisation. Relationships between the active failure modes are explored. Design maps are shown for a wide range of loading that can be used to calculate the minimum panel weight and the corresponding values of the geometric parameters. The approach developed is general and is equally applicable for sandwich panels with similar hollow cores made of other materials.