Parametric Sensitivity of Shear Correction Factors for Multiwall Corrugated Structures

Transverse shear deformation plays a non-negligible role in lightweight periodic-core structures and motivates the use of shear-corrected reduced-order plate and beam models. However, the shear correction factor ks is often treated as a constant despite its strong dependence on cross-sectional heterogeneity and geometry. This work quantifies the global sensitivity of ks in corrugated paperboard by combining an energy-consistent pixel-based identification of the effective shear stiffness GA)eff with a space-filling exploration of the parameter domain. Representative 3-ply (single-wall) and 5-ply (double-wall) configurations are generated directly in the pixel domain using sinusoidal fluting descriptions and non-overlapping liner bands. The effective shear stiffness is obtained from a heterogeneous shear-energy equivalence, where a normalized two-dimensional shear-stress shape function is computed from pixel-based sectional descriptors and integrated with spatially varying shear moduli. Latin Hypercube Sampling is employed to explore wide ranges of flute period, height, and thickness, liner thicknesses, and liner–flute shear-modulus contrasts. Global sensitivity is reported using unit-free normalized indices, including log-elasticities (based on the slope of lnks versus lnx) and partial rank correlation coefficients. The results demonstrate that flute geometry is the primary driver of ks variability, while material contrast significantly modulates shear-energy localization, particularly in double-wall boards with two distinct flutings. The proposed framework enables high-throughput shear correction assessment and supports robust parameterized reduced-order models for corrugated structures.