Communicated by T. WannerThe Shilnikov-type single-pulse homoclinic orbits and chaotic dynamics of a simply supported truss core sandwich plate subjected to the transverse and the in-plane excitations are investigated in detail. The resonant case considered here is principal parametric resonance and 1:2 internal resonance. Based on the normal form theory, the desired form for the global perturbation method is obtained. By using the global perturbation method developed by Kovacic and Wiggins, explicit sufficient conditions for the existence of a Shilnikov-type homoclinic orbit are obtained, which implies that chaotic motions may occur for this class of truss core sandwich plate in the sense of Smale horseshoes. Numerical results obtained by using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method agree with theoretical analysis at least qualitatively.It is not difficult to show that, when the condition 3 2ˇ2 4 fI r cos c > 0 is satisfied, the fixed point p 0 is a center, and when the condition 3 2ˇ2 4 fI r cos s < 0 is satisfied, the fixed point q 0 is a saddle, which is connected to itself by a homoclinic orbit. The phase portrait of system (37) is given in Figure 3(a). Following the analysis presented by Kovacic and Wiggins, it is found that for sufficiently small , the