Thermal postbuckling of temperature-dependent sandwich beams with carbon nanotube-reinforced face sheets

Thermal postbuckling response of a sandwich beam made of a stiff host core and carbon nanotube (CNT)-reinforced face sheets is analyzed in this research. Distribution of CNTs across the thickness of face sheets may be uniform or functionally graded. Material properties of the constituents are considered as temperature dependent. Properties of the face sheets are obtained by means of a modified rule of mixture approach. First-order shear deformation theory and von Karman type of geometrical nonlinearity are incorporated with the virtual displacement principle. Ritz method with polynomial basis functions is applied to the virtual displacement principle to obtain the matrix representa tion of the governing equations. An iterative displacement control algorithm is applied to solve the nonlinear eigenvalue problem and trace the postbuckling equilibrium path. It is shown that, graded profile of CNTs, length to thickness ratio, host thickness to face thickness ratio, volume fraction of CNTs, boundary conditions, and temperature dependency, all are important factors on critical buckling temperature and postbuckling equilibrium path of sandwich beams with CNT-reinforced face sheets. However, influence of host thickness to face thickness ratio is ignorable.