Thermo-elastoplastic characteristics of heat-resisting functionally graded composite structures

This paper is concerned with a study on thermo-elastoplastic characteristics of functionallygraded composite. Compared to the classical layered composites, it shows a wide range of thermo-elastoplasticcharacteristics according to the choice of two major parameters, the thickness-wise volumefraction of constituents and the relative thickness ratio of the graded layer. Therefore, by selecting anappropriate combination of the two parameters, one is expected to design the most suitable heat-resistingcomposite for a given thermal circumstance. Here, we address the parametric investigation on its characteristics together with theoretical study on thermo-elastoplasticity and numerical techniques for its finiteelement approximations. Through the numerical experiments, we examine the influence of two parameterson the thermo-elastoplastic characteristics.