Thermal buckling and postbuckling behavior of FG-GRC laminated cylindrical shells with temperature-dependent material properties

Thermal postbuckling analysis is presented for graphene-reinforced composite (GRC) laminated cylindrical shells under a uniform temperature field. The GRC layers are arranged in a functionally graded (FG) graphene reinforcement pattern by varying the graphene volume fraction in each GRC layer. The GRCs possess temperature dependent and anisotropic material properties and the extended Halpin–Tsai model is employed to evaluate the GRC material properties. The governing equations are based on a higher order shear deformation shell theory and include the von Kármán-type kinematic nonlinearity and the thermal effects. A singular perturbation method in conjunction with a two-step perturbation approach is applied to determine the thermal postbuckling equilibrium path for a GRC shell with or without geometric imperfection. An iterative scheme is developed to obtain numerical thermal buckling temperatures and thermal postbuckling load–deflection curves for the shells. The results reveal that the FG-X piece-wise FG graphene distribution can enhance the thermal postbuckling capacity of the shells when the shells are subjected to a uniform temperature loading.