Analytical and Numerical Investigation of Buckling Behavior of Functionally Graded Sandwich Plate with Porous Core

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research presents a new analytical model for the buckling analysis of a functionally graded rectangular sandwich plate with all edges simply supported and subjected to in-plane loading conditions. The sandwich plate comprises a porous metal core with an isotropic metal that serves as a skin. The functionally graded core metal has a varied distribution of porosities in accordance with the plate thickness, which may lead to variation in material properties. By considering classical plate theory principles, the kinematic relations are used to obtain the analytical solution. The effects of changing gradient index, elastic parameters, porosity distribution, slenderness ratio, boundary conditions, and core materials on buckling stresses and dynamic response of functionally graded sandwich plates are presented. A numerical study on elastic buckling using finite element analysis (FEA) was employed to examine the accuracy of the proposed analytical solution. From the obtained results, it is found that the porosity coefficients play significant influences on the buckling behavior and reliability of the FG sandwich structures.