Transient thermoelastic investigation of FGM composite plate with varying grading parameter

Abstract

Functionally graded materials (FGM) are newly developed materials described by variation in the characteristics gradually over volume. These materials find applications in very high temperature environments namely aerospace industry, nuclear reactors, gas turbines, and electronics cooling. These materials are used in high temperature environments with dynamic load conditions, so their transient thermoelastic analysis under these conditions is necessary. In this paper, transient thermoelastic investigation of FGM is carried out using finite element method (FEM). The effect of temperature dependence is considered in the thermophysical properties of a FGM plate in the direction of its thickness. FEM is applied to solve the thermo mechanical equations and Newmark direct integration scheme is used for obtaining the solution for transient loading. This method improves the accuracy for three dimensional cases and produces solutions directly in time domain. A comparative study is made with some existing methods, and it is found that temperature and thermal stresses remain within safe limits at higher temperatures while preserving the deformation in the structure. The results show that the grading parameter has a dominating effect on transient thermoelastic behavior on FGM plate.