Thermal buckling of porous symmetric and non-symmetric sandwich plate with homogenous core and S-FGM face sheets resting on Pasternak foundation

The effect of porosity and thermal environment on buckling responses for the sandwich plates with different boundary conditions is analyzed and discussed in the present study. The author’s recently developed sandwich plate using a new modified sigmoid function based functionally graded material (S-FGM) plate of different symmetric and asymmetric configurations is considered. A new temperature distribution through the thickness based on modified sigmoid law is proposed in which temperature is assumed to be conducted in the thickness direction. Three different types of porosity are considered viz. even, uneven but symmetric and uneven but non-symmetric. A new uneven non-symmetric porosity model is used in which micro-voids are varied in accordance with material property variation in the thickness direction to capture the accurate distribution of voids on the plate. The principle of virtual work is employed to derive equilibrium equations. An exact solution is obtained using the assumed solution with shape functions satisfying the edge boundary conditions. This is implemented using Galerkin Vlasov’s method. The analysis has been performed to study the effect of porosity, geometric configurations, inhomogeneity parameter, and foundation parameter. It is observed that the elastic foundation parameters have the least effect on non-symmetric plate configuration subjected to nonlinear temperature distribution in comparison to other symmetric and non-symmetric plate configurations and temperature distribution. Besides, the non-symmetric plate configuration possesses maximum thermal buckling temperature in comparison to a symmetric configuration. The volume fraction exponent with value 2 is observed as a changeover point where the effect of porosity distribution is null and void for 2-1-1 plate configuration irrespective of boundary conditions. The calculated outcomes and interpretations can be useful as a validation study for the imminent investigation of sandwich S-FGM plates having porosities in the thermal environment.