Geometrically Nonlinear Deformation of Circular Sandwich Plates under Transversely Non-Uniform Temperature Rise

Abstract

Geometrically nonlinear bending and buckling of circular sandwich plates subjected to transversely non-uniform temperature rise is investigated in this paper. On the basis of sandwich plate theory, nonlinear equations governing the large thermal axis-symmetric deformations of circular sandwich plate in terms of the middle plane’s displacements are derived. Numerical solutions of the nonlinear boundary value problem are obtained by using the shooting method. Equilibrium paths and configurations for different boundary conditions and different values of materials and geometry parameters are illustrated. Numerical results show that the boundary conditions and the stiffness greatly effect critical buckling loads.