An analytical method for the vibration and buckling of functionally graded beams under mechanical and thermal loads

An analytical method for vibration and buckling behaviours of Functionally Graded (FG) beams with various boundary conditions under mechanical and thermal loads is presented. Based on linear strain-displacement relations, equations of motion and essential boundary conditions are derived from Hamilton’s principle. In order to account for thermal effects, three cases of the temperature rise through the thickness, which are uniform, linear and nonlinear, are considered. The exact solutions are derived using the state space approach. Numerical results are presented to investigate the effects of boundary conditions, temperature distributions, material parameters and slenderness ratios on the critical temperatures, critical buckling loads, and natural frequencies as well as load-frequencies curves, temperature-frequencies curves of FG beams under thermal/mechanical loads. The accuracy and effectiveness of proposed model are verified by comparison with previous research.