Nonlinear thermo-mechanical analysis of ES double curved shallow auxetic honeycomb sandwich shells with temperature-dependent properties

Abstract It is the first time the nonlinear thermo-mechanical analysis (buckling and postbuckling) of imperfect eccentrically stiffened (ES) double curved shallow shells made of auxetic material under uniform external pressure, axial compressive and thermal loads has been studied by adopting analytical method. The double curved shallow sandwich shell is constructed by an auxetic honeycomb core layer with negative Poisson’s ratio and two isotropic homogeneous skin layers. In the present study, the outer surface of the structure is reinforced by a system of FGM stiffeners and taking the influence of pores in the stiffeners into account to increase the load capacity of the structure. Besides, the material properties of the shells and stiffeners are both temperature-dependent. The first-order shear deformation theory is applied to derive equilibrium and compatibility equations of double curved shallow auxetic shell, considering both the geometrical nonlinearity in the Von Karman sense and initial geometrical imperfections and shells placed on the Winkler – Pasternak foundation. The Galerkin and stress function methods are proposed to determine the critical load value and the deflection– load curve by taking the root form of the two-term rotation angles to give the Galerkin integral an equilibrium equation. Several comparisons with results in other literature are made to examine the reliability and accuracy of the method used in the present study. Finally, the effects of thermal environment, reinforced stiffeners, elastic foundation, pores and parameters of auxetic core layer on the buckling and postbuckling loads are evaluated in this paper. The numerical and graphical results show that the reinforced stiffeners, auxetic core, temperature and porous distribution have significantly influenced on the buckling and postbuckling loads of ES double curved shallow auxetic honeycomb sandwich shells.