Thermal Buckling Analysis of Circular Plates Made of Piezoelectric and Saturated Porous Functionally Graded Material Layers

This study presents the thermal buckling of a radially solid sandwich circular plate made of a piezoelectric actuator and porous material. The porous material properties vary through the thickness of the plate for a specific function. The general thermoelastic nonlinear equilibrium and linear stability equations are derived using the variational formulations to obtain the governing equations of the piezoelectric porous plate. The geometrical nonlinearities are considered along with the higher-order shear deformation plate theory. The problem is simplified to an axisymmetric one, and then closed-form solutions for circular plates subjected to temperature load are obtained. The buckling temperatures that are derived for solid circular plates under uniform temperature rise through the thickness for an immovable clamped edge of the boundary conditions. The effects of the porous plate thickness, piezoelectric thickness, applied actuator voltage, and variation of porosity on the critical temperature load are investigated. In this paper, the stability of the plate is compared through saturated and unsaturated porous layers, and the effect of the fluid's thermal expansion coefficient on the stability of the plate is investigated. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.