Nonlinear thermal bending response of FGM plates due to heat conduction

Nonlinear thermal bending analysis is presented for a simply supported, shear deformable functionally graded plate without or with piezoelectric actuators subjected to the combined action of thermal and electrical loads. Heat conduction and temperature-dependent material properties are both taken into account. The temperature field considered is assumed to be a uniform distribution over the plate surface and varied in the thickness direction and the electric field considered only has non-zero-valued component E_Z. The material properties of functionally graded materials (FGMs) are assumed to be graded in the thickness direction according to a simple power law distribution in terms of the volume fractions of the constituents, and the material properties of both FGM and piezoelectric layers are assumed to be temperature-dependent. The governing equations of an FGM plate are based on a higher order shear deformation plate theory that includes thermo-piezoelectric effects. A two step perturbation technique is employed to determine the thermal load–deflection and thermal load–bending moment curves. The numerical illustrations concern nonlinear bending response of FGM plates without or with surface bonded piezoelectric actuators due to heat conduction and under different sets of electric loading conditions. The results reveal that for the case of heat conduction the nonlinear thermal bending responses are quite different to those of FGM plates subjected to transverse mechanical loads, and the temperature-dependency of FGMs could not be neglected in the thermal bending analysis.