Thermal buckling and postbuckling behavior of FG-GRC laminated cylindrical shells with temperature-dependent material properties

Thermal postbuckling analysis is presented for graphene-reinforced composite (GRC) laminated cylindrical shells under a uniform temperature field. The GRC layers are arranged in a functionally graded (FG) graphene reinforcement pattern by varying the graphene volume fraction in each GRC layer. The GRCs possess temperature dependent and anisotropic material properties and the extended Halpin-Tsai model is employed to evaluate the GRC material properties. The governing equations are based on a higher order shear deformation shell theory and include the von Karman-type kinematic nonlinearity and the thermal effects. A singular perturbation method in conjunction with a two-step perturbation approach is applied to determine the thermal postbuckling equilibrium path for a GRC shell with or without geometric imperfection. An iterative scheme is developed to obtain numerical thermal buckling temperatures and thermal postbuckling load-deflection curves for the shells. The results reveal that the FG-X piece-wise FG graphene distribution can enhance the thermal postbuckling capacity of the shells when the shells are subjected to a uniform temperature loading.