Buckling behavior of functionally graded porous plates integrated with laminated composite faces sheets

In this work, lightweight sandwich plates consisting of a functionally graded porous (FGP) core and two laminated composite face sheets resting on elastic foundation have been proposed. Three different profiles are considered for the distributions of porosities along core thickness. The main aim of this paper is the investigation of the buckling behavior of the proposed porous sandwich plates (PSPs) by reporting their critical mechanical loads and their corresponding mode shapes. A finite element method (FEM) based on first order shear deformation theories (FSDT) is developed to discretize governing equations for the buckling behavior of the proposed sandwich plates. The effects of porosity dispersion and volume, the numbers and angles of laminated layers, sandwich plate geometrical dimensions, elastic foundation coefficients, loading and boundary conditions are studied. The results show that the use of FGP core can offer a PSP with half weight core and only 5% reduction in critical buckling loads. Moreover, stacking sequences with only ±45 orientation fibers offer the highest values of buckling loads.