Influence of porosity and nonuniform in-plane edge loads on vibration and buckling response of power law and sigmoid function based FG sandwich plates with geometrical discontinuities

Abstract

Porosity defects can emerge during the manufacturing process of Functionally Graded Sandwich Plates (FGSPs). In practice, FGSPs have geometric discontinuities/cutouts and are exposed to Nonuniform In-plane Edge Loads (NIELs). The presence of porosity, cutout and NIELs causes a significant reduction in the stiffness of the plate affecting its vibration and buckling behavior. Therefore, in this paper vibration and buckling results obtained using the Finite Element (FE) method hitherto not reported in the literature are presented for porous FGSPs with cutouts and subjected to NIELs. Four types of porosity distribution models are explored, and the porosity imperfections are modeled as the criteria of stiffness reduction. Porosity-dependent material properties of FGSPs are evaluated using modified power law and sigmoid function. The current study incorporates two distinct kinds of sandwich configuration in such a way that there is no material mismatch along the thickness direction. The application of different cases of NIELs on the plate with cutouts leads to the development of nonuniform stresses. Hence a novel dynamic approach has been proposed to evaluate buckling loads by implementing two sets of boundary conditions. The first set of boundary conditions calculates pre-buckling stress, while second set calculates critical buckling loads. The generated results from the current FE formulation are compared with existing results in the literature to ensure accuracy. Finally, the effect of porosity distribution, NIELs, cutout ratio and its positions, support conditions, volume fraction exponents and geometric parameters on the vibration and buckling response are studied and discussed to arrive at appropriate conclusion.