A study on non-linear post-buckling behavior of tapered Timoshenko beam made of functionally graded material under in-plane thermal loadings

Abstract

In the present work, the non-linear post-buckling load–deflection behavior of tapered functionally graded material beam is studied for different in-plane thermal loadings. Two different thermal loadings are considered. The first one is due to the uniform temperature rise and the second one is due to the steady-state heat conduction across the beam thickness leading to non-uniform temperature rise. The governing equations are derived using the principle of minimum total potential energy employing Timoshenko beam theory. The solution is obtained by approximating the displacement fields following Ritz method. Geometric non-linearity for large post-buckling behavior is considered using von Kármán type non-linear strain-displacement relationship. Stainless steel/silicon nitride functionally graded material beam is considered with temperature-dependent material properties. The validation of the present work is successfully performed using finite element software ANSYS and using the available result in the literature. The post-buckling load–deflection behavior in non-dimensional plane is presented for different taperness parameters and also for different volume fraction indices. Normalized transverse deflection fields are presented showing the shift of the point of maximum deflection for various deflection levels. The results are new of its kind and establish benchmark for studying non-linear thermo-mechanical behavior of tapered functionally graded material beam.