Thermal buckling of functionally graded plates using a local Kriging meshless method

The mechanical and thermal buckling behaviors of ceramic-metal functionally grade plates (FGPs) were studied by using a local Kriging meshless method. The local meshless method was developed based on the local Petrov-Galerkin weak-form formulation combined with shape functions having the Kronecker delta function property, constructed by the Kriging interpolation. The cubic spline function of high continuity was used as the weight function to simplify the local weak form of governing equations with the integration on the internal boundaries vanishing. The transverse shear strains of FGPs were incorporated by employing the first-order shear deformation plate theory and plate material properties were assumed to change exponentially along the thickness direction. Convergence and comparison studies examined the stability and accuracy of the presented method. Two types of FGMs, Al/Al₂O₃ and Ti-6Al-4V/Aluminum oxide, were chosen for mechanical and thermal buckling analyses. The influences of volume fraction exponent, boundary condition, length-to-thickness ratio and loading type on the buckling behaviors of FGPs were discussed. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.