Closed form solutions for thermal buckling of functionally graded rectangular thin plates

This work concerns the critical buckling temperature of functionally graded rectangular thin plates; the properties of functionally graded material vary continuously in accordance with the power law of thickness z. Closed form solutions for the critical thermal parameter are obtained for the plate with the following boundary condition combinations: simply supported, clamped and guided edges, under uniform, linear and nonlinear temperature fields via the separation-of-variable method. Furthermore, a new method is proposed to determine the critical buckling temperature from the critical thermal parameter. The present results coincide well with those in the literature, verifying the correctness of the present method. The influences of the length-thickness ratio, length-width ratio, power law index and initial temperature on critical buckling temperature are investigated.