A novel four-unknown integral model for buckling response of FG sandwich plates resting on elastic foundations under various boundary conditions using Galerkin's approach

In this work, the buckling analysis of material sandwich plates based on a two-parameter elastic foundation under various boundary conditions is investigated on the basis of a new theory of refined trigonometric shear deformation. This theory includes indeterminate integral variables and contains only four unknowns in which any shear correction factor not used, with even less than the conventional theory of first shear strain (FSDT). Applying the principle of virtual displacements, the governing equations and boundary conditions are obtained. To solve the buckling problem for different boundary conditions, Galerkin's approach is utilized for symmetric EGM sandwich plates with six different boundary conditions. A detailed numerical study is carried out to examine the influence of plate aspect ratio, elastic foundation coefficients, ratio, side-to-thickness ratio and boundary conditions on the buckling response of FGM sandwich plates. A good agreement between the results obtained and the available solutions of existing shear deformation theories that have a greater number of unknowns proves to demonstrate the precision of the proposed theory.