Biaxial thermo-mechanical buckling of orthotropic auxetic FGM plates with temperature and moisture dependent material properties on elastic foundations

Thermo-mechanical buckling analysis of the orthotropic auxetic plates (with negative Poisson ratios) has not been performed so far, especially, in the hygrothermal environments. The complexity increases when the auxetic plate is fabricated from functionally graded orthotropic materials and surrounded by an elastic foundation. The aforementioned analyses are carried out in the present research, for the first time. The buckling loads may be uniaxial or biaxial ones. Moreover, temperature and moisture dependent material properties are considered. The pre-buckling effects are also considered in the paper. The high-order shear-deformation governing differential equations are solved based on a new differential quadrature method (DQM). The resulting solution may cover many practical simpler applications. A comprehensive parametric study is accomplished for a wide range of geometric and material properties parameters and various boundary conditions. Results reveal that the hygrothermal conditions lead to degradations in the material properties and buckling strengths, especially for higher gradation exponents, the elastic foundation may enhance the buckling behavior through monitoring the buckling pattern, the buckling load decreases as the orthotropy angle increases, and the auxeticity has reduced the buckling strength for the employed material and environmental information. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.