Critical buckling temperature and force in porous sandwich plates with CNT-reinforced nanocomposite layers

Abstract

This paper presents the thermal and mechanical buckling behaviors of lightweight polymeric nanocomposite sandwich plates containing uniformly dispersed (UD) pores resting on two-parameter elastic foundations. The outer layers of the proposed sandwich plates were assumed to be made of functionally graded (FG) carbon nanotube (CNT)-reinforced polymeric nanocomposite. For nanocomposite layers, the considerable effect of cluster formation of randomly-oriented CNTs was considered and material properties were evaluated through Eshelby-Mori-Tanaka (EMT)'s approach with the definition of cluster state. Furthermore, the first and third order shear deformation theories (FSDT and TSDT) of plates were employed to define the total energy function of sandwich plates. The governed buckling equations were facilitated using a mesh-free method. The effects of porosity, nanofiller characterizations, elastic foundation coefficients, sandwich plate dimensions and boundary conditions on buckling behavior were explored. The obtained results showed that porosity considerably improved thermal buckling behavior; however, it reduced the critical mechanical loads of sandwich plates. Moreover, adding CNTs into outer layers simultaneously improved the mechanical and thermal buckling responses of sandwich plates.