Examination of thermal postbuckling behavior of temperature dependent FG-GRMMC laminated plates with in-plane negative Poisson's ratio

Auxetic composite laminates are a new type of engineering materials that have unique features for important potential applications. This paper examines the effect of in-plane negative Poisson's ratio (NPR) on the thermal postbuckling behaviors of graphene-reinforced metal matrix composite (GRMMC) plates. The plates rest on an elastic foundation and are subjected to a uniform temperature rise. The GRMMC layers with different volume fractions of graphene reinforcement can be arranged to achieve piece-wise functionally graded (FG) patterns across the plate thickness and the material properties of the GRMMC layers are temperature-dependent. The Reddy's third order shear deformation plate theory and the geometric nonlinearity of von Karman-type are applied to formulate the thermal postbuckling equations for GRMMC laminated plates. The nonlinear problem can be solved by a two-step perturbation approach. Parametric study is performed for (+/- 10)(5T) and (+/- 10)(3T) GRMMC laminated plates possessing in-plane NPR. The results reveal that the buckling temperatures for (+/- 10)(5T) and (+/- 10)(3T) plates are significantly enhanced with an FG-X pattern for the plates. We found that due to the combined effect of FG and in-plane NPR, the thermal postbuckling strength of FG-X (+/- 10)(3T) plate is higher than that of FG-X (+/- 10)(5T) plate.