A refined HSDT for bending and dynamic analysis of FGM plates

In this work, a novel higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT) for static and free vibration analysis of functionally graded (FG) plates is proposed. Unlike the conventional HSDTs, the proposed theory has a novel displacement field which includes undetermined integral terms and contains fewer unknowns. Equations of motion are obtained by using Hamilton's principle. Analytical solutions for the bending and dynamic investigation are determined for simply supported FG plates. The computed results are compared with 3D and quasi-3D solutions and those provided by other plate theories. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed HSDT can achieve the same accuracy of the conventional HSDTs which have more number of variables.