Buckling analysis of functionally graded arbitrary straight-sided quadrilateral plates on elastic foundations

As a first endeavor, the buckling analysis of functionally graded (FG) arbitrary straight-sided quadrilateral plates rested on two-parameter elastic foundation under in-plane loads is presented. The formulation is based on the first order shear deformation theory (FSDT). The material properties are assumed to be graded in the thickness direction. The solution procedure is composed of transforming the governing equations from physical domain to computational domain and then discretization of the spatial derivatives by employing the differential quadrature method (DQM) as an efficient and accurate numerical tool. After studying the convergence of the method, its accuracy is demonstrated by comparing the obtained solutions with the existing results in literature for isotropic skew and FG rectangular plates. Then, the effects of thickness-to-length ratio, elastic foundation parameters, volume fraction index, geometrical shape and the boundary conditions on the critical buckling load parameter of the FG plates are studied.