Thermal postbuckling investigations of functionally graded plates using 3-D finite element method

Three-dimensional thermal buckling and postbuckling analyses of functionally graded materials subjected to uniform or non-uniform temperature rise are examined by using finite element method. Material properties are varied continuously in the thickness direction according to a simple power law distribution. For more accurate modeling of material properties and temperature field in the thickness direction, a three-dimensional solid element is used. The Green–Lagrange nonlinear strain–displacement relation is used to account for large deflection due to thermal load and the incremental formulation is applied for nonlinear analysis. The thermal loads are assumed as uniform, linear and sinusoidal temperature rise across the thickness. Numerical results are compared with those of previous works. Furthermore, the thermal buckling and postbuckling behaviors due to temperature field, volume fraction distributions, and system geometric parameters are studied, in detail.