A novel finite element formulation for static bending analysis of functionally graded porous sandwich plates

This article aims to propose a finite element formulation based on Quasi-3D theory for the static bending analysis of functionally graded porous (FGP) sandwich plates. The FGP sandwich plates consist of three layers including the bottom skin of homogeneous metal, the top skin of fully ceramic and the FGP core layer with uneven porosity distribution. A quadrilateral (Q4) element with nine degrees of freedom (DOFs) per node is derived and employed in analyzing the static bending response of the plate under uniform and/or sinusoidally distributed loads. The accuracy of the present finite element formulation is verified by comparing the obtained numerical results with the published results in the literature. Then, some numerical examples are performed to examine the effects of the parameters including power-law index k and porosity coefficient ξ on the static bending response of rectangular FGP sandwich plates. In addition, a problem with a complicated L-shape model is conducted to illustrate the superiority of the proposed finite element method.