| Abstract: | This paper is concerned with the thermal buckling analysis of an isotropic inhomogeneous rectangular plate subjected to the arbitrary thermal loads. The fundamental equations system is derived by introducing the technique of the newly defined position of the reference plane, which allows us to analyze the problem using an elementary plate theory. It is assumed that the material properties such as the coefficient of linear thermal expansion α, the thermal conductivity λ, and Young's modulus of elasticity, E, are changed in the thickness direction with the power law of the coordinate variable, whereas Poisson's ratio ν is assumed to be constant. As an illustrative example, we consider the thermal buckling problem of a simply supported inhomogeneous rectangular plate due to uniform heat supply. Numerical calculations are carried out for several cases taking into account the variations of the inhomogeneous material properties, aspect ratio, and width-to-thickness ratio. |
