Enhanced thermal stability of functionally graded sandwich cylindrical shells by shape memory alloys

The present paper deals with the nonlinear thermal instability of geometrically imperfect sandwich cylindrical shells under uniform heating. The sandwich shells are made of a shape memory alloy (SMA)-fiber-reinforced composite and functionally graded (FG) face sheets (FG/SMA/FG). The Brinson phenomenological model is used to express the constitutive characteristics of SMA fibers. The governing equations are established within the framework of the third-order shear deformation shell theory by taking into account the von Karman geometrical nonlinearity and initial imperfection. The material properties of constituents are assumed to be temperature dependent. The Galerkin technique is utilized to derive expressions of the bifurcation points and bifurcation paths of the sandwich cylindrical shells. Using the developed closed-form solutions, extensive numerical results are presented to provide an insight into the influence of the SMA fiber volume fraction, SMA pre-strain, core thickness, non-homogeneity index, geometrical imperfection, geometry parameters of sandwich shells and temperature dependency of materials on the stability of shells. The results reveal that proper application of SMA fibers postpones the thermal bifurcation point and dramatically decreases thermal post-buckling deflection. Moreover, the induced tensile recovery stress of SMA fibers could also stabilize the geometrically imperfect shells during the inverse martensite phase transformation.