Abstract
Reinforced sandwich panels are frequently used in refrigerated trailer construction. There is a need to reinforce the sandwich panels because they can achieve some very large dimensions and consequently loose their ability to support the working loads. Work has been developed in the field of elastic and fracture behaviour of several sandwich beams with Z reinforcements. It was concluded that some reinforcements highly increase the beams rigidity. A few specialized analytical models were developed for linear elastic analysis, and some numerical models were built to analyze the different types of beams tested experimentally in three-point bending. The models contribute to a better understanding of the deformation phenomena involved and help in isolating and characterising the critical terms of divergence between theory and experiment. The present work contributes to the establishment of design and analysis parameters necessary to this type of construction.