Abstract
In this article, the nonlinear thermomechanical buckling behaviors of sandwich functionally graded plates subjected to an axial compression and external pressure are analytically analyzed resting on nonlinear elastic foundation. Assuming that the plates are reinforced by oblique stiffeners and rested on nonlinear elastic foundation. The formulations are established using the higher-order shear deformation theory taking into account the geometrical nonlinearity of von Kármán. The Lekhnitskii’s smeared stiffener technique is developed for shear deformable oblique stiffener system using the coordinate transformation technique with both mechanical and thermal terms. The Galerkin method is utilized to obtain the nonlinear algebraically equation system, then, solve it to determine the explicit expressions of critical buckling loads and postbuckling load–deflection curves. Numerical results show the effects of temperature, nonlinear elastic foundation, stiffeners, and material and geometrical properties on nonlinear behaviors of plates.
Keywords
Introduction
Plates are the fundamental structural elements of engineering structures, such as aircraft, spacecraft, civil structures, and so on. Along with the appearance of advanced materials, the research and applications of composite materials have increased during the past decades.
The ultimate strength limit obtained through full nonlinear transient analysis and strengthening effects of stiffeners on regular and arbitrarily stiffened plates subjected to uniaxial stress and biaxial stress were discussed by Liu and Wang. 1 Breslavsky et al. 2 studied the static deflection, free and forced nonlinear vibration behavior of plates made from two types of hyperelastic materials, namely, rubber and soft biological tissues. Duc and Thu 3 investigated the nonlinear buckling response of imperfect laminated three-phase polymer composite plates based on the classical plate theory with the effect of uniform temperature change. Huang et al. 4 reported a finite-element model to predict the buckling behavior of stiffened laminated composite plates with a curved beam element for stiffeners compatible with the shell element. Bikakis et al. 5 studied the linear buckling behavior of simply supported and clamped fiber-metal laminated plates under axial compressive loads using finite-element method and eigenvalue buckling analysis. Khazaeinejad et al. 6 proposed a simple mathematical approach to determine the nonlinear response of unrestrained or restrained against lateral translation plates with a thickness-dependent temperature field and subjected to the transverse mechanical loads. A finite-element investigation of buckling behavior of stiffened and unstiffened composite plates with three types of composite materials based on the ANSYS 14.0 APDL software was studied by Kumar et al. 7 Anish et al. 8 discussed the effects of openings and additional mass on the linear free vibration behavior of higher-order shear deformable laminated sandwich rhombic plates.
Functionally graded material (FGM) and functionally graded carbon nanotubes reinforced composite (FG-CNTRC) are the advanced composite materials, which have the thermomechanical properties varying continuously from one surface to the other. FGM and FG-CNTRC plates have been widely utilized in many advanced engineering designs because of superior properties in thermomechanical behavior.9–11
Zenkour12,13 studied the static and vibration behavior of nonsymmetric sandwich FGM plates using the sinusoidal shear deformation plate theory. The buckling and postbuckling of rectangular, annular, and circular FGM plates under thermal and mechanical loads were reported.14–19 Effects of elastic foundation interaction, shear deformation, and geometrical imperfection were numerically investigated. Using the two-step perturbation technique, Shen et al.20,21 studied the postbuckling behavior of FGM and sandwich FGM plates subjected to thermal and mechanical loads. Sobhy 22 proposed a four-variable shear deformation plate theory to investigate the hygrothermal vibration and buckling behavior of sandwich FGM plates on Pasternak’s elastic foundation. By developing the higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT) and normal deformable plate theories, Mohammadi et al. 23 studied the bending, buckling, and free vibration responses of incompressible thick FGM plates. Using the quasi-3D shear deformation theories, Zarga et al. 24 and Mahmoudi et al. 25 discussed the thermomechanical behavior of sandwich FGM plates with and without the Pasternak’s elastic foundation. Effect of hygrothermal environment on the dynamic stability behavior of sandwich FGM plates was investigated by Hellal et al. 26 Kumar 27 presented the thermomechanical postbuckling behavior of FGM plates with random material properties and circular cutouts at center, taking into account the plate–foundation interaction modeled by Pasternak’s elastic foundation model.
In fact, the FGM plates and other complex structures usually reinforced by longitudinal and transversal (orthogonal) stiffeners to provide outstanding benefit for structures. Based on the first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) and the element-free improved moving least-squares Ritz method, Zhang et al.28–32 studied the postbuckling behavior of FG-CNTRC rectangular, polygonal, and arbitrarily straight-sided quadrilateral plates subjected to different load cases. Using Lekhnitskii’s smeared stiffener technique and Galerkin procedure, the nonlinear buckling behavior of eccentrically stiffened FGM double curved shallow shells with elastic foundation and initial imperfection effects was investigated by Dung and Dong. 33 Kim et al. 34 studied nonlinear buckling and vibration of eccentrically oblique stiffened FGM plates using the classical thin shells theories. Lekhnitskii’s smeared stiffeners technique was improved for classical oblique stiffeners with the assumption of ignoring the thermal stress in stiffeners.
The fully improved Lekhnitskii’s smeared stiffeners technique for classical shell theory and FSDT is developed35–37 considering the thermal terms of stiffeners. Nam et al. 35 and Phuong et al. 36 studied nonlinear buckling of FGM and multilayer FGM cylindrical shell reinforced by spiral (oblique) stiffeners subjected to torsional loads with and without shell–foundation interaction effects. Nam et al. 37 improved the Lekhnitskii’s smeared stiffener technique for the oblique stiffeners in framework of the FSDT to investigate the nonlinear thermomechanical stability of stiffened multilayer FGM plates.
Effect of sandwich FGM structures on the vibration, bending, and buckling behavior of plates and shallow spherical caps were mentioned and discussed by Meksi et al., 38 Rahmani et al. 39 and Phuong et al. 40 Ansari et al. 41 developed a nonlinear microstructure-dependent third-order shear deformable beam model and investigated the nonlinear mechanical behavior of an FGM microbeam using the variational differential quadrature method.Zhang et al. 42 used the element-free kp-Ritz method to investigate the postbuckling behavior of the glass-protection film exposed in the thermal environment. Effects of Pasternak foundation, Kerr foundation, and viscoelastic foundation on the mechanical behavior of FGM plates and single-layered graphene sheets were investigated and discussed by Addou et al., 43 Boulefrakh et al., 44 and Bellal et al. 45
Due to the large deflection of plates, the nonlinear effect of elastic foundation needs to be considered. According to the best of authors’ knowledge, there are no studies on the large deflection postbuckling of stiffened FGM plates resting on nonlinear elastic foundation. This article proposes a new analytical approach for nonlinear buckling and postbuckling of sandwich FGM plates under external pressure and axial compression in the thermal environment resting on three-parameter nonlinear elastic foundation. The plates are reinforced by higher-order shear deformable orthogonal or oblique stiffeners taking into account the thermal terms of stiffeners. The improved Lekhnitskii’s smeared stiffener technique is applied for oblique FGM stiffeners using the coordinate transformation technique within the framework of HSDT and Hooke’s law with both thermal effects of plate skin and stiffeners. The very large effects of oblique stiffeners and three-parameter nonlinear elastic foundation are obtained on the nonlinear buckling behavior of structures in numerical investigations.
Sandwich FGM plate reinforced by oblique stiffeners on nonlinear elastic foundation
Consider a sandwich FGM plate of length a, width b, and thickness h, which is subjected to axial compressive load and external pressure load in the thermal environment. The plate skin is assumed to consist of three layers: upper and lower FGM layers and isotropic core layer with the thickness denoted by

Geometry and coordinate system of oblique stiffened plate rested on nonlinear elastic foundation.
The sandwich FGM plate skin are investigated in two cases (see Figure 2) of FGM—full metal—FGM plates and FGM—full ceramic—FGM plates.

Material distribution of stiffened sandwich FGM plates. (a) First case and (b) second case.
In the first case, the volume fraction of materials of FGM’s upper layer varies from the ceramic-rich surface (
Elastic modulus E and thermal expansion coefficient α of sandwich FGM plate skin are considered in the form
where
where
In the second case, the volume fraction of materials of FGM’s upper layer varies from the metal-rich surface (
The elastic moduli and the thermal expansion coefficients of plate and stiffeners are considered as the first case by changing the c, m, and
The plate–foundation interaction of three-parameter nonlinear elastic foundation model is assumed as follows 46
where K1 (N/m3) is the Winkler foundation modulus, K2 (N/m) is the shear layer foundation stiffness of the Pasternak model, and K3 is the nonlinear modulus (N/m5).
Note that the nonlinear modulus may be positive or negative, it depends on the properties of foundation.
Governing equation establishment
By applying the HSDT, the strain components of plate at a distance z from the mid-surface are obtained as
in which the relations between the strain and displacement at the mid-surface taking into account the von Kármán’s geometrical nonlinearity are determined by
and
where
Using equation (5), the compatibility equation is obtained as
Hooke’s law for the sandwich FGM plate skin taking into account the thermal effects is written as
with
Hooke’s law for shear deformable FGM stiffeners (in the local coordinate system
Using the developed Lekhnitskii’s smeared stiffener technique, the internal force and moment expressions of the sandwich FGM plate reinforced by FGM stiffeners are obtained based on the coordinate transformation technique for oblique stiffeners as follows
where
with
where if if if
Transverse shear forces and the higher-order shear forces are expressed as
where the stiffness parameters
The strain–force relations are reversely written from equation (10)
Substituting equation (14) into equations (11) and (12), the moment–force relations are determined as
in which
The equilibrium equation system of the stiffened sandwich FGM plates based on the HSDT is applied as
Boundary condition and solution method
In this article, two types of boundary condition are considered
For the first type, four edges of the stiffened sandwich FGM plate are simply supported and freely movable (FM), the boundary conditions are written as
For the second type, four edges of the plate are simply supported. The edges
where
Assuming that a stress function
As can be observed, the first two equations of (17) are automatically satisfied.
Substituting equation (20) into equation (14) and then substituting into equation (7), the compatibility equation is rewritten as
Substituting equations (13), (15), (16), and (20) into three end equations of equation (17) leads to
The approximate solutions of equations (22a) to (22c) satisfying the boundary conditions (18) and (19) are assumed in the trigonometric functions as
The geometrical imperfection
with
Substituting equations (23) and (24) into the compatibility equation (21), the stress function expression is obtained as follows
where
with
Substituting equations (23), (24), and (25) into equations (22a), (22b), (22c), then applying the Galerkin method, leads to
where the expressions of coefficients
Clearly, the Galerkin method is applied to reduce the nonlinear partial differential equation system (22a), (22b), (22c) to the solution of nonlinear algebraic equation system (26).
Nonlinear buckling analysis
From the two end equations of equation (26), these equations can be expressed by
Substituting equation (27) into the first equations of equation (26), the load–deflection relation is received by
in which
Equation (28) is the governing equation, which is utilized to analyze the buckling and postbuckling of sandwich FGM plates reinforced by oblique FGM stiffeners resting on nonlinear elastic foundation based on HSDT.
Mechanical buckling analysis
Consider a sandwich FGM plate reinforced by FGM stiffeners resting on nonlinear elastic foundation, subjected to axial compressive load Px uniformly distributed on two edges
From equation (28), the relation between Px and
From equation (29), when
The critical axial compressive buckling load is determined by condition
Consider a sandwich FGM plate subjected to uniform external pressure with
From equation (28), the q and
Equation (31) is utilized to investigate the postbuckling behavior of sandwich FGM plate reinforced by orthogonal and/or oblique stiffeners.
Thermomechanical buckling analysis
The plate is simply supported with FM edges
Consider an imperfect sandwich FGM plate subjected to axial compressive load Px uniformly distributed at
By employing the condition
in which
Substituting equation (33) into equation (28) yields
Equation (34) is utilized to determine the axial compressive load–deflection postbuckling curves of imperfect sandwich FGM plate in the thermal environment.
When
in which
The critical thermo-axial compressive buckling load is determined by condition
Consider a stiffened imperfect sandwich FGM plate subjected to external pressure q in the thermal environment (
From equation (28), the external pressure load–deflection postbuckling curve expression can be obtained in the explicit form
Numerical results and discussion
Validation results
In this article, to validate the present analysis, the nondimensional critical axial compressive buckling loads
As can be observed, the perfect agreements are obtained, especially, the results of Zenkour 13 which are utilized HSDT coincide with the present results.
Comparison of nondimensional critical axial compressive buckling load
(I):
Numerical investigations
Numerical results are presented in this section for orthogonal or oblique stiffened FGM plates. Silicon nitride and stainless steel are applied for FGM, referred to as
where P0,
Material properties of constituent materials of the considered FGM plate.
FGM: functionally graded material.
Consider a sandwich FGM plate reinforced by FGM orthogonal or oblique stiffeners system rested on the nonlinear elastic foundation with temperature dependence (T-D) of material properties. The geometrical and material properties of plate and stiffeners are
The effects of stiffener and boundary condition types on the critical axial compressive buckling load of perfect sandwich FGM plates (
Effects of stiffener and boundary condition types on the critical axial compressive buckling load
FM: freely movable; IM: immovable.
Effects of stiffener and the boundary condition types on the critical axial compressive buckling load
FM: freely movable; IM: immovable.
Figures 3 and 4 show the effects of stiffener type on

Effect of stiffener type on

Effect of stiffener type on
Effects of stiffener type on

Effect of stiffener type on

Effect of stiffener type on
Table 5 and Figures 7 and 8 show that the angle of stiffener θ strongly influence the critical axial compressive buckling load and postbuckling curves of plates. For investigated results, the critical axial compressive buckling load and load carrying capacity in the postbuckling state of square plate is the largest with
Effect of angle of stiffeners θ on the critical axial compressive buckling loads

Effect of angle of stiffeners θ on

Effect of angle of stiffeners θ on
Effects of volume fraction index k of FGM layers on the critical axial compressive buckling loads and postbuckling curves of plates are considered in Tables 3, 4 and Figures 9, 10. The obtained results show that, for the first case, the critical buckling load increases when the volume fraction index k increases and the postbuckling curve is upper with the higher value of k, the opposite phenomena are obtained for the second case.

Effect of k on

Effect of k on
Consider an oblique stiffened sandwich FGM plate in the first case subjected to axial compressive load in thermal environment. Effects of temperature change on the critical axial compressive buckling loads and postbuckling load–deflection curves of sandwich FGM plate are shown in Tables 6, 7 and Figures 11, 12. As can be seen, critical axial compressive buckling load decreases when the thermal environment increases in two cases of T-D of material properties and temperature independence (T-ID) of material properties (Tables 6 and 7).
Effect of temperature change
T-D: temperature dependence; T-ID: temperature independence.
Effect of temperature change
T-D: temperature dependence; T-ID: temperature independence.

Effect of temperature change

Effect of temperature change
Figures 13 and 14 show the effects of temperature-dependence properties on the postbuckling curve of oblique stiffened sandwich FGM plates. The investigated results show that the postbuckling curve of the case of T-ID material properties is upper than the one of T-D material property case.

Effect of temperature dependence on

Effect of temperature dependence on
Effects of nonlinear elastic foundation on the critical axial compressive buckling loads and postbuckling curves are presented in Tables 8 and 9. It can be seen that when the foundation moduli increase, the critical compression load also increases. The tables also show that the nonlinear modulus of foundation K3 does not affect the critical compressive buckling loads that it only affects the postbucking load–deflection behavior of plates.
Effect of foundation moduli on the critical axial compressive buckling loads,
T-D: temperature dependence; T-ID: temperature independence.
Effect of foundation moduli on the critical axial compressive buckling loads
T-D: temperature dependence; T-ID: temperature independence.
Figures 15 and 16 show the effects of nonlinear modulus of foundation K3 on the postbuckling curve of oblique stiffened sandwich FGM plates. As can be observed, the large effects of nonlinear modulus of foundation are obtained. The postbuckling curve of plate is upper with a larger value of K3. Especially, an irregular tendency of the postbuckling curve is obtained when K3 is negative.

Effect of nonlinear modulus of elastic foundation on

Effect of nonlinear modulus of elastic foundation on
Conclusions
Using the coordinate transformation technique, Lekhnitskii’s smeared stiffener technique is developed for oblique shear deformable stiffeners taking into account the thermal effects for plate and stiffeners in this article. Governing equations of orthogonal/oblique stiffened sandwich FGM plate resting on nonlinear elastic foundation is established according to the HSDT combined with von Kármán geometrical nonlinearity. Nonlinear thermomechanical buckling behavior of stiffened plates is obtained using the Galerkin method. The most significant remark is that the effects of oblique stiffeners on the critical buckling load are greater than the one of orthogonal stiffeners.
Some other important remarks are obtained from numerical investigated as follows Material sandwich model strongly influences the nonlinear buckling behavior of the oblique stiffened FGM plate. Volume fraction index, nonlinear elastic foundation, thermal environment, and geometrical parameters significantly influence on the nonlinear buckling behavior of plates. Critical buckling loads of temperature-independent material FGM plates are larger than ones of temperature-dependent material FGM plates. Nonlinearity of elastic foundation does not influence to the linear critical buckling, reversely, it strongly influences to the nonlinear postbuckling behavior of plates.
Supplemental material
Supplemental Material, Appendix - Nonlinear thermomechanical buckling of sandwich FGM oblique stiffened plates with nonlinear effect of elastic foundation
Supplemental Material, Appendix for Nonlinear thermomechanical buckling of sandwich FGM oblique stiffened plates with nonlinear effect of elastic foundation by Dang Thuy Dong, Vu Hoai Nam, Nguyen Thoi Trung, Nguyen Thi Phuong and Vu Tho Hung in Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Supplemental material
Supplemental material is available online.
References
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