Abstract

This investigation aims to analyze thermal buckling and post-buckling behavior of functionally graded graphene nanoplatelet-reinforced composite (FG-GPLRC) beams. The beams are classified into two types of ideal and non-ideal FG-GPLRC beams in which the ideal beams have smooth profiles of material distributions and another beams have layer-wise distributions of materials. The material profiles of the ideal beams are utilized as the controlling tracks for producing the material distributions of the non-ideal beams via a layer-to-layer integration technique. This technique confirms that the overall weight fraction of the materials is the same for both types of beams. The proposed models can be used to determine the material properties of the beams for further investigation on thermal buckling and post-buckling of the beams. Third-order shear deformation theory is employed to construct the energy equations of the problems, and then they are solved by the implementation of the Jacobi-Ritz method cooperating with the direct iteration procedure and Newton-Raphson technique. From our investigation, it can be disclosed that when non-ideal beams are created using ideal beams parabolic profile, the results differ significantly. However, the differences between the results of ideal and non-ideal beams can be eliminated by adding more layers. (Figure presented.)