Nonlinear thermal stability of eccentrically stiffened functionally graded truncated conical shells surrounded on elastic foundations

This paper studies the thermal stability of an eccentrically stiffened functionally graded truncated conical shells in thermal environment and surrounded on elastic foundations. Both of the FGM shell as well as the stiffeners are deformed under temperature. The formulations are based on the classical shell theory taking into account geometrical nonlinearity, initial geometrical imperfection, temperature-dependent properties and the Lekhnitsky smeared stiffeners technique with Pasternak type elastic foundation. By applying Galerkin method, the closed-form expression for determining the thermal buckling load is obtained. The numerical results show that the critical thermal load in the case of the uniform temperature rise is smaller than one of the linear temperature distribution through the thickness of the shell, and the critical thermal load increases when increasing the coefficient of stiffeners and vice versa. The paper also analyzes and discussed the significant effects of material and geometrical properties, elastic foundations on the thermal buckling capacity of the eccentrically stiffened FGM truncated conical shell in thermal environment. The obtained results are validated by comparing with those in the literature. (C) 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.