Nonlinear buckling of imperfect eccentrically stiffened metal–ceramic–metal S-FGM thin circular cylindrical shells with temperature-dependent properties in thermal environments

• Investigate the nonlinear static buckling for imperfect eccentrically stiffened functionally graded thin circular cylindrical shells with metal–ceramic–metal layers.
• The shell is in thermal environment and surrounded on elastic foundation.
• Both shells and stiffeners are deformed simultaneously due to temperature.
• Effects of temperature, material and geometrical properties, elastic foundations and eccentrically outside stiffeners on the buckling of the S-FGM shells are analyzed and discussed.

In this paper, an analytical approach is presented to investigate the nonlinear static buckling for imperfect eccentrically stiffened functionally graded thin circular cylindrical shells with temperature-dependent properties surrounded on elastic foundation in thermal environment. Both shells and stiffeners are deformed simultaneously due to temperature. Material properties are graded in the thickness direction according to a Sigmoid power law distribution in terms of the volume fractions of constituents (S-FGM) with metal–ceramic–metal layers. The Lekhnitsky smeared stiffeners technique with Pasternak type elastic foundation, stress function and the Bubnov–Galerkin method are applied. Numerical results are given for evaluating effects of temperature, material and geometrical properties, elastic foundations and eccentrically outside stiffeners on the buckling and post-buckling of the S-FGM shells. The obtained results are validated by comparing with those in the literature.