Static and dynamic analyses of insulated concrete sandwich panels using a unified non-linear finite element model

Insulated concrete sandwich panels are comprised of two outer concrete wythes and an inner layer of foam insulation. They have been increasingly used because of their advantages of light weight and energy efficiency. Various shear connectors can be used to connect the two outer concrete wythes. More recently, Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) shear connectors have been used, which can eliminate thermal bridging and improve the thermal performance. Typical approaches to Finite Element (FE) analysis treat static and dynamic analyses separately. However, due to the flexibility of the FRP shear connectors and the cracking of the concrete in insulated concrete sandwich panels, a nonlinear static analysis model would often diverge early based on a preliminary FE study conducted by the authors. To address this issue, a nonlinear explicit dynamic FE model using ABAQUS