A new approach for calculating the internal forces, moments and deflections of sandwich panels with reinforced concrete facings

Software for calculating the internal forces, moments and deflections of sandwich elements with reinforced concrete facings has been developed as part of a research project at Technische Universität Kaiserslautern. Sandwich elements with stiff concrete facings are internally statically indeterminate. Cracking of the concrete facings leads to a redistribution of the internal forces and moments over the length and across the cross-section of the element. This redistribution must be considered in the structural design of such elements.
An existing program for calculating metal-faced sandwich elements was considerably extended by an iterative approach that allows the internal forces and moments to be calculated with the exact stiffness of the cracked facings. This iterative approach and the calculation algorithm behind the new software, called swe2+, are explained in this paper. A verification of the calculation results and a parametric study of a two-span sandwich element are also presented.