Thermal buckling of temperature dependent FG-CNT reinforced composite plates

Thermally induced bifurcation buckling of rectangular composite plates reinforced with single walled carbon nanotubes is investigated in this research. Distribution of CNTs across the thickness of the plate is considered to be uniform or functionally graded. Thermomechanical properties of the constituents are considered to be temperature dependent. Equivalent properties of the composite media are obtained by means of a modified rule of mixtures approach. First order shear deformation plate theory is used to formulate the governing equations. An energy based Ritz method is used to obtain the algebraic presentation of the stability equations. Due to their fast convergence feature, Chebyshev polynomials are adopted as the basis of the shape functions. Various combinations of clamped, simply supported, sliding supported and free boundary conditions with normal to edge immovable or movable features are considered. An iterative process is applied to obtain the critical buckling temperature of composite plates with temperature dependent material properties. Numerical result are given to explore the influences of various parameters such as characteristics of CNTs, geometrical characteristics of the plate and boundary conditions. It is shown that, in most of the cases, FG-X pattern of the CNTs is the most influential case since it results in higher critical buckling temperatures.