Buckling analysis of thin-walled functionally graded sandwich box beams

highlights
• Buckling analysis of thin-walled functionally graded (FG) sandwich box beams is investigated.
• Numerical results are obtained for FG sandwich box beams with simply–supported, clamped–free and clamped–clamped boundary conditions.
• Effects of the power-law index and skin-core-skin thickness ratios on the critical buckling loads and post-buckling respones are considered.

Buckling analysis of thin-walled functionally graded (FG) sandwich box beams is investigated. Material properties of the beam are assumed to be graded through the wall thickness. The Euler-Bernoully beam theory for bending and the Vlasov theory for torsion are applied. The non-linear stability analysis is performed in framework of updated Lagrangian formulation. In order to insure the geometric potential of semitangental type for internal bending and torsion moments, the non-linear displacement field of thin-walled cross-section is adopted. Numerical results are obtained for FG sandwich box beams with simply–supported, clamped–free and clamped–clamped boundary conditions to investigate effects of the power-law index and skin-core-skin thickness ratios on the critical buckling loads and post-buckling responses. Numerical results show that the above-mentioned effects play very important role on the buckling analysis of sandwich box beams.