Postbuckling of FGM cylindrical shells under combined axial and radial mechanical loads in thermal environments

A postbuckling analysis is presented for a shear deformable functionally graded cylindrical shell of finite length subjected to combined axial and radial loads in thermal environments. Heat conduction and temperature-dependent material properties are both taken into account. The temperature field considered is assumed to be a uniform distribution over the shell surface and varied in the thickness direction only. Material properties are assumed to be temperature-dependent, and graded in the thickness direction according to a simple power law distribution in terms of the volume fractions of the constituents. The formulations are based on a higher order shear deformation shell theory with von Kármán–Donnell-type of kinematic nonlinearity. A boundary layer theory of shell buckling, which includes the effects of nonlinear prebuckling deformations, large deflections in the postbuckling range, and initial geometric imperfections of the shell, is extended to the case of functionally graded cylindrical shells. A singular perturbation technique is employed to determine the interactive buckling loads and postbuckling equilibrium paths. The numerical illustrations concern the postbuckling response of perfect and imperfect cylindrical shells with two constituent materials subjected to combined axial and radial mechanical loads and under different sets of thermal environments. The results reveal that the temperature field and volume fraction distribution have a significant effect on the postbuckling behavior, but they have a small effect on the imperfection sensitivity of the functionally graded shell.