Numerical Analysis of Thermal Buckling of Honeycomb Core Sandwich Panel under Thermal Loading

In the aerospace industry, the usage of sandwich panels in a variety of space structures such as satellites is increasing due to their excellent features like high strength-to-weight ratio, and thermal insulation. These structures are subjected to a variety of thermal loads depending on their working conditions, which cause them to expand or contract. Since these panels are connected simultaneously by twists, buckling is possible due to thermal loads. In this paper, the thermal buckling analysis of a CCCC Aluminum honeycomb core sandwich panel is performed under asymmetric thermal loading, using ABAQUS. The face sheets are attached to the core by adhesive. Thermal loading is assumed to be two heat fluxes of 70 watts and 20 watts, which are asymmetric, and face sheets radiate heat to their surroundings. The modeling results showed the panel does not buckle under the mentioned thermal loading. The critical buckling stress is 750 MPa and 400 MPa where the maximum thermal stress is 95 MPa and 37 MPa for vertical and horizontal edges respectively, which shows a significant difference of 8 to 11 times. The temperature distribution of the various points of the panel was also obtained by calculating the maximum temperature of 84 °C at the 70-watt heat flux location and the minimum temperature of 15.65 °C in the lower-left corner. The influence of various parameters like face sheets and core cell wall thickness on buckling occurrence is also discussed.