Treffer: Mechanical buckling of FGM plates resting on elastic foundations using layer wise finite element

The concept of FGM was first introduced by a group of material scientists in Japan in mid–1980s for space plane project. FGMs are microscopically made composites usually from a mixture of metal and ceramic, in which material properties vary continuously in one or three directions. These gradual changes of materials properties overcome the disadvantages of traditional FRP (Fiber Reinforced Polymer) composites, regarding inter and intra laminar failure modes. The variation of material properties is defined by mathematical function, which may be given by: Power Law model, Exponential model, Sigmond law model, Mori Tanaka scheme and others. As FGMs are usually made of two materials, the metal and the ceramic, the ceramic layer serves for thermal resistance, whereas the metal layer gives high toughness. Due to the high heat resistance, FGMs have many practical applications in aerospace industries, defence industries, biomechanics, as well as and civil engineering. Therefore, the buckling problem of FGM plate subjected to in–plane loading and resting on elastic foundations received considerable interest of researchers over the last decades. When modelling elastic foundations, many studies have been performed to predict the critical buckling loads of highway and airfield pavement systems as well as foundations of storage tanks, swimming pools, and buildings by employing a plate on an elastic foundation . The surface layer of the pavement (reinforced concrete slab in the rigid pavement and asphalt mixtures in the flexible pavement) is regularly simulated as a rectangular plate, while the underlying layers are modeled using an elastic foundation. For modelling elastic medium and describing the interactions of the plate and foundation, various kinds of foundation models are suggested. The simplest model for the elastic foundation is Winkler or one–parameter model [4], which models the foundation as a series of separated springs without coupling effects between each other. In wish to improve the Winkler model, several ...