Buckling Analysis of Porous Functionally Graded Plates in Thermal Environment by Using a Meshfree Method

This paper presents the buckling analysis of thermal-loaded rectangular plates made of porous functionally graded material (FGM). FGM has mechanical properties that continuously vary through thickness. Porous FGM is a branch of FGM and it takes into account the porosity of the material. In this study, the Reissner-Mindlin plate theory is implemented for plates computation with the help of the radial point interpolation method (RPIM). The main advantage of RPIM compared to other meshfree methods is the satisfaction of the Kronecker delta property that allows directly imposing boundary conditions on field nodes. Equilibrium and stability equations derived from the virtual work principle are used to determine pre-buckling and critical buckling temperatures. Besides, the influence of pores distribution on the critical buckling temperature is also investigated. Many numerical examples are presented in the paper showing excellent agreement with other reliable references. The obtained results show that the environment temperature, power-law index, porosity and porosity distribution through the thickness affect the critical temperature of the plates.