Thermal Stability of Thin Rectangular Plates with VariableThickness Made of Functionally Graded Materials

In this research, thermal buckling of thin rectangular plate made of functionally graded materials(fgms) with linear varying thickness is considered. material properties are assumed to be gradedin the thickness direction according to a simple power law distribution in terms of the volumefractions of the constituents. the supporting condition of all edges of such a plate is simplysupported. the equilibrium and stability equations of a fgm rectangular plate (fgrp) underthermal loads derived based on classical plate theory (cpt) via variational formulation, and areused to determine the pre-buckling forces and the governing differential equation of the plate. thebuckling analysis of a functionally graded plate is conducted using; the uniform temperature rise,having temperature gradient through-the-thickness, and linear temperature variation in thethickness and closed-form solutions are obtained. the buckling load is defined in a weightedresidual approach. in a special case the obtained results are compared by the results of functionallygraded plates with uniform thickness. the influences of the plate thickness variation and the edgeratio on the critical loads are investigated. finally, different plots indicating the variation ofbuckling load vs. different gradient exponent k, different geometries and loading conditions wereobtained.