A comprehensive study on stability of FGM plates

• Implementing a refined plate theory to study the stability of FGM plates.
• Shear stability of thick plates is examined.
• Influences of in-plane boundary conditions on buckling are studied.
• Temperature dependency is taken into account for heat conduction loadings.

In this paper, instability of a thick through-the-thickness functionally graded material (FGM) rectangular plates under the practical cases of thermal and mechanical loading conditions is analyzed. Uniform shear, uniform uni-axial or biaxial compression/tension, uniform temperature rise, heat conduction across the thickness, and combined cases are considered. For thermal buckling and combined cases in thermal field, temperature dependency of the properties is also taken into account. The four-variable refined plate theory with parabolic distribution of shear strains through-the-thickness is implemented to establish the governing equilibrium and stability equations. Only the clamped type of boundary conditions is considered after the proof of bifurcation type buckling existence. The resulted equations are uncoupled in a reasonable manner. The multi-term Galerkin method is used to derive the critical buckling loads/temperatures and buckled shapes of the plate under various loading conditions.