Nonlinear thermal behavior of shear deformable FG porous nanobeams with geometrical imperfection: Snap-through and postbuckling analysis

Present paper deals with the nonlinear thermal bending response, thermal postbuckling behavior, and snapthrough phenomenon due to lateral mechanical load in a thermally preloaded functionally graded (FG) porous perfect/imperfect nanobeam subjected to two types of thermal loading, including heat conduction across the thickness and uniform temperature rise. Heterogenous material properties of the porous nanobeams are assumed to be position/temperature-dependent, where dependency is obtained according to the modified rule of mixture and Touloukian formulation. Two types of porosity distribution and also geometrical imperfection of the nanobeam are considered. Assuming the Timoshenko beam model and von-Karman nonlinearity, the nonlinear equilibrium equations are extracted on the basis of the nonlocal theory of elasticity. With the establishment of the principle of virtual displacement and Chebyshev polynomial of the first kind as the basic functions, the Ritz method is utilized to obtain the matrix form of the nonlocal governing equations. Two different strategies, including the Newton-Raphson technique and direct displacement control scheme, are first proposed to extract the nonlinear bending and postbuckling trajectories of the graded porous nanobeam. Afterwards, to trace the snapping behavior beyond limit loads of the graded porous nanobeam with thermal preloading, the cylindrical arch-length scheme as a path-following method is adopted. Numerical parametric investigations are given to discuss the influences of the power-law index, two types of porosity distribution and thermal loads, size-dependent nonlocal parameter, imperfection amplitude, and boundary conditions on the snap-through behavior and the nonlinear thermal stability of the FG nanobeam.