Non-linear thermo-mechanical cylindrical bending of functionally graded plates

Based on the first-order non-linear von Karman theory, cylindrical bending of functionally graded (FG) plates subjected to mechanical, thermal, and combined thermo-mechanical loadings are investigated. Analytical solutions are obtained for an FG plate with various clamped and simply-supported boundary conditions. The closed form solutions obtained are very simple to be used in design purposes. The material properties are assumed to vary continuously through the thickness of the plate according to a power-law distribution of the volume fraction of the constituents. The effects of non-linearity, material property, and boundary conditions on various response quantities are studied and discussed. It is found that linear analysis is inadequate for analysis of simply-supported FG plates even in the small deflection range especially when thermal load is present. Also it is shown that bending—extension coupling can not be seen in response quantities of clamped FG plates. Also an exact solution is developed for the one-dimensional heat conduction equation with variable heat conductivity coefficient.