Thermal buckling of cross-ply laminated composite beams

Thermal buckling of thick, moderately thick and thin cross-ply laminated beams subjected to uniform temperature distribution are analyzed. Exact analytical solutions of refined beam theories are developed to obtain the critical buckling temperature of cross-ply beams with various boundary conditions. The state space concept in conjunction with Jordan canonical form will be used to solve exactly the governing equations of the thermal buckling problems. The effects of length to thickness ratio, modulus ratio, thermal expansion coefficients ratio, various boundary conditions and number of layers on the critical buckling temperature are investigated.