Analysis and modeling of flexural deformation of laminated steel

Steel/polymer/steel laminate sheets, commonly known as laminated steels, received attention for their superior noise damping properties in automotive applications. Published work indicates that the tensile properties of the laminated steel follow the prediction of the rule of mixtures. The flexural response of the laminated steel, however, depends on the type of the sandwich configuration. The flexural rigidity of the vibration-damping type of laminated steel is lower than the value calculated using beam theory. In industrial scale numerical simulations, automotive body panels are usually represented by using a single layer of shell element. Limited research work on finite element (FE) modeling of laminated steel has indicated that the vibration-damping type of laminated steel is better represented by using two layers of shells. It is logical to relate the simplest FE representation to the way the flexural rigidity of the laminated steel that conforms to the prediction using the beam theory. This paper examines the flexural response of the vibration-damping type of laminated steel through the comparison of beam theory predictions with the experimental results for cantilever beam and three-point bending configurations. It was found that the analytical solution for the split beam is in good agreement with the experimental results. This finding confirms the FE model that represents the vibration-damping type of laminated steel using two layers of shell with tied interface. The simulations using this method yielded good correlations with the experimental results for the two flexural loading cases studied in this paper.