Thermal stability of functionally graded sandwich plates using a simple shear deformation theory

In the present work, a simple first-order shear deformation theory is developed and validated for a variety of numerical examples of the thermal buckling response of functionally graded sandwich plates with various boundary conditions. Contrary to the conventional first-order shear deformation theory, the present first-order shear deformation theory involves only four unknowns and has strong similarities with the classical plate theory in many aspects such as governing equations of motion, and stress resultant expressions. Material properties and thermal expansion coefficient of the sandwich plate faces are assumed to be graded in the thickness direction according to a simple power-law distribution in terms of the volume fractions of the constituents. The core layer is still homogeneous and made of an isotropic material. The thermal loads are considered as uniform, linear and non-linear temperature rises within the thickness direction. The results reveal that the volume fraction index, loading type and functionally graded layers thickness have significant influence on the thermal buckling of functionally graded sandwich plates. Moreover, numerical results prove that the present simple first-order shear deformation theory can achieve the same accuracy of the existing conventional first-order shear deformation theory which has more number of unknowns.