Thermal buckling analysis of functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite sandwich beams

Thermo-mechanical buckling of sandwich beams with a stiff core and face sheets made of functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite (FG-CNTRC) within the framework of Timoshenko beam theory is presented. The material properties of FG-CNTRC are supposed to vary continuously in the thickness direction and are estimated through the rule of mixture. Also the properties of these materials should be considered temperature dependent. The governing equations and boundary conditions are derived by using Hamilton's principle and solved using an efficient technique called the Differential Transform Method (DTM) to achieve the critical buckling of the sandwich beam in uniform thermal environment. A detailed parametric study is guided to investigate the effects of carbon nanotube volume fraction, slenderness ratio, core-to-face sheet thickness ratio, and clamped-clamped, simply-simply and clamped-simply end supports on the critical buckling behavior of sandwich beams with FG-CNTRC face sheets. Numerical results for comparison of sandwich beams with uniformly distributed carbon nanotube-reinforced composite (UD-CNTRC) face sheets with those with FG-CNTRC face sheets are also presented.