Thermal buckling analysis of cross-ply laminated rectangular plates under nonuniform temperature distribution: A differential quadrature approach

Differential quadrature method (DQM) is implemented for analyzing the thermal buckling behavior of the symmetric cross-ply laminated rectangular thin plates subjected to uniform and/or non-uniform temperature fields. The approach includes two steps: (1) solving the problem of in-plane thermo-elasticity to obtain the in-plane force resultants and (2) solving the buckling problem under the force distribution obtained in the previous step. Solution procedures are numerically performed by discretizing the governing differential equations and boundary conditions using DQM method. Applying the developed DQ formulation, the buckling loads are obtained for several sample plates. The numerical results compared well with those available in the literature as well as those obtained by ABAQUS. Parametric studies are conducted to investigate the influence of some important parameters including the plate aspect ratio, cross-ply ratio, and stiffness ratio on the critical temperature and mode shape of buckling.