A sampling surfaces method and its implementation for 3D thermal stress analysis of functionally graded plates

The paper deals with a recently developed method of sampling surfaces (SaS) and its implementation for the three-dimensional (3D) steady-state problem of thermoelasticity for laminated functionally graded (FG) plates subjected to thermomechanical loading. The SaS method is based on choosing inside the nth layer In not equally spaced SaS parallel to the middle surface of the plate in order to introduce temperatures and displacements of these surfaces as basic plate variables. Such an idea permits the presentation of the thermoelastic laminated FG plate formulation in a very compact form. The SaS are located inside each layer at Chebyshev polynomial nodes that provides a uniform convergence of the SaS method. This means that the SaS method can be applied efficiently to the 3D stress analysis for thermoelastic laminated FG plates with a specified accuracy utilizing the sufficient number of SaS.