Postbuckling of functionally graded graphene-reinforced composite laminated cylindrical shells subjected to external pressure in thermal environments

The current investigation deals with the buckling and postbuckling behaviors of graphene-reinforced composite (GRC) laminated cylindrical shells subjected to lateral or hydrostatic pressure under thermal environmental conditions. The piece-wise GRC layers are arranged in a functionally graded (FG) pattern along the thickness direction of the shells. The temperature dependent material properties of GRCs are estimated by the extended Halpin-Tsai micromechanical model with graphene efficiency parameters being calibrated against the GRC material properties from a molecular dynamics simulation study. We employ the Reddy's higher order shear deformable shell theory in association with the von Kármán geometric nonlinearity to model the shell buckling problem under different thermal environmental conditions. The buckling pressure and the postbuckling equilibrium path for the perfect and geometrically imperfect GRC laminated cylindrical shells are obtained by applying a singular perturbation technique along with a two-step perturbation approach. We observe that the piece-wise functionally graded distribution of graphene reinforcement can increase the buckling pressure and the postbuckling strength of the GRC laminated cylindrical shells subjected to external pressure.