Thermoelastic response of thin plate with variable material properties under transient thermal shock

•Formulations with variable material properties are proposed.•The relations between each material property and real temperature are considered.•Effects of temperature dependency on thermoelastic response are obtained.•Results that material parameter is function of fixed temperature are compared.

This paper is to investigate the thermoelastic response of an elastic medium with variable material properties under the transient thermal shock. The governing equations involving temperature-dependent properties are proposed by the Clausius inequality and generalized theory of thermoelasticity with one thermal relaxation time, where the higher order expansion with respect to increment temperature of the Helmholtz free energy is used to describe the relations of each material parameter with real temperature. The problem of a thin plate composed of titanium alloy, subjected to a sudden temperature rise at the boundary, is solved. The propagations of thermoelastic wave and thermal wave, as well as the distributions of displacement, temperature and stresses, are obtained and discussed. The comparison of present results with those obtained from the case of constant material properties are conducted to reveal the effect of the temperature dependency of material properties on thermoelastic response. The comparison with the results obtained from the case that each material parameter is the function of fixed temperature is also conducted to explain the coupling effect between variable material properties and temperature distribution.