Influence of zig-zag and warping effects on buckling of functionally graded sandwich plates according to sinusoidal shear deformation theories

In this article various sinusoidal shear deformation theories are used for the buckling analysis of functionally graded sandwich plates. The theories may account for through-the-thickness deformations and/or zig-zag effect. The governing equations and boundary conditions are derived using the Principle of Virtual Work under a generalization of Carrera's Unified Formulation and further interpolated by collocation with radial basis functions. A numerical investigation has been conducted on the buckling analysis of sandwich plates with functionally graded skins. The influence of the thickness stretching and the zig-zag effects on these problems is investigated. Numerical results demonstrate the accuracy of the present approach.