Thermal Buckling of Functionally Graded Plates

Equilibrium and stability equations of a rectangular plate made of functionally graded material under thermal loads are derived, based on the classical plate theory. When it is assumed that the material properties vary as a power form of thicknesscoordinate variable z and when the variational method is used, the system of fundamental differential equations isestablished. Thederived equilibrium and stability equationsforfunctionally graded plates areidenticalwith theequationsforhomogeneousplates. Bucklinganalysisoffunctionally graded platesunderfour typesofthermalloadsiscarriedoutresultinginclosed-formsolutions.Thebucklingloadsarereducedtothecritical buckling temperature relationsfor functionally graded plates with linearcomposition of constituent materials and homogeneous plates. The results are validated with the reduction of the buckling relations for functionally graded plates to those of isotropic homogeneous plates given in the literature.