A novel and simple HSDT for thermal buckling response of functionally graded sandwich plates

A new higher shear deformation theory (HSDT) is presented for the thermal buckling behavior of functionally graded (FG) sandwich plates. It uses only four unknowns, which is even less than the first shear deformation theory (FSDT) and the conventional HSDTs. The theory considers a hyperbolic variation of transverse shear stress, respects the traction free boundary conditions and contrary to the conventional HSDTs, the present one presents a new displacement field which includes undetermined integral terms. Material characteristics and thermal expansion coefficient of the sandwich plate faces are considered 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 supposed as uniform, linear and non-linear temperature rises within the thickness direction. An energy based variational principle is used to derive the governing equations as an eigenvalue problem. The validation of the present work is carried out with the available results in the literature. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the influences of variations of volume fraction index, length-thickness ratio, loading type and functionally graded layers thickness on nondimensional thermal buckling loads.