Thermal post-buckling of FG-CNT reinforced composite plates

Abstract Present research deals with the postbuckling problem of carbon nanotube reinforced composite plates subjected to uniform temperature rise loading. Distribution of carbon nanotubes as reinforcements may be uniform or functionally graded. To account for the large deformations of the plate, von-Karman type of geometrical nonlinearity is included into the formulation. The virtual displacements principle associated with the conventional Ritz formulation whose shape functions are selected as the Chebyshev polynomials is used to obtain the matrix representation of the nonlinear equilibrium equations. The solution method is general and may be used for arbitrary combination of boundary conditions. The postbuckling equilibrium path which is governed by a nonlinear eigenvalue problem is traced using a displacement control strategy. Results of this study are compared with the available data in the open literature for the cases of isotropic homogeneous plates and cross-ply laminated plates. Afterwards numerical results are given for FG-CNTRC plates. It is shown that, FG-X pattern results in higher buckling temperature and also decreases the postbuckling deflection of the plate. Furthermore, this type of composites are eager to exhibit the secondary instability which is designated with a snap-through phenomenon in the post-buckling equilibrium path.