Prismatic sandwich panels fabricated from metals offer a compelling
alternative to more traditional panels across diverse industries, primarily due
to their superior strength-to-weight ratio. Although several core types were
proposed in the past, further improvements in performance could be achieved by
devising the topology of the core through a topology optimization framework,
which is explored in this article for the first time. Another novelty is the
inclusion of joints between the sandwich beams and its surroundings in the
analysis and optimization. Stress is minimized under uniform pressure loading
on the beams and natural frequency maximized using the Method of Moving
Asymptotes. The results are compared with X-core, Y-core, corrugated-core, and
web-core sandwich beams, a few conventional prismatic sandwich types, which are
optimized using a prominent global evolutionary algorithm. Manufacturing
requirements are considered through practical limitations on the design
variables. It is shown that structures produced by topology optimization
outperform the conventional sandwich beams by up to 44% at intermediate to high
mass levels, where volume fraction is between 0.2 and 0.4, but often through
increased topological complexity. The new core topologies bear a certain
resemblance with the conventional core types, underscoring engineering
ingenuity that went into their development over the years. The topology of the
optimized joints differs from the conventional joint. The results also show
some limitations of the topology optimization framework, for example that it
does not offer better-performing beams for volume fractions below 0.2.Comment: 17 pages, 3 tables, 19 figures, journal pape