Thermal stability analysis of circular functionally graded sandwich plates of variable thickness using pseudo-spectral method

In the present study, the thermal stability of laminated functionally graded (FGM) circular plates of variable thickness subjected to uniform temperature rise based on the first-order shear deformation plate theory is presented. Furthermore, two models for FGM plates with variable thickness, corresponding with two manufacturing methods, are proposed. The laminated FGM plate with variable thickness is considered as a sandwich plate constituted of a homogeneous core of variable thickness and two constant thickness FGM face sheets whose material properties are assumed to be graded in the thickness direction according to a simple power law. In order to determine the distribution of the prebuckling thermal load along the radius, the membrane equation is solved using the shooting method. Subsequently, employing the pseudo-spectral method that makes use of Chebyshev polynomials, the stability equations are solved numerically to evaluate the critical temperature rise. The results demonstrate that the thermal stability is significantly influenced by the thickness variation profile, aspect ratio, the volume fraction index, and the core-to-face sheet thickness ratio. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.