In this article, an effort has been made to deal with stability analysis of a smart sandwich beam with cross-ply faces and ER core. An ER layer is adhered to the laminated composite beam to increase dynamic stability of the beam. Bingham’s model is applied to model dynamic behavior of ER layer. A smart beam element is derived for the sandwich beam and finite element modeling is carried out. Transient response of the beam to an initial excitation is calculated using direct integration method. By analyzing the dynamic responses of the beam in different load amplitudes, critical loads and stability regions are obtained. Parametric study has been done and effects of various parameters such as the electric field, stacking sequence of the layers, and thickness ratio of elastic faces on static and dynamic stability of the beam are investigated. Obtained results show that stacking sequence and thickness ratio of elastic faces affects both static and dynamic stability of the beam. On the other hand, ER layer affects damping properties of structures as a result of which only dynamic stability of the beam is improved.

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