Stability Improvement in Smart Sandwich Plates with Different Edge Conditions under Nonuniform Compressive Loads in Thermo-Electrical Environment

This research paper provides an analysis of the buckling resistance of smart sandwich plates subjected to the nonuniform uniaxial/biaxial compressive load in a thermo-electrical environment. A rectangular plate is assumed to be made from the porosity-dependent nanocomposite foam sandwiched by piezoelectric actuator/sensor layers. The influence of feedback Gain is also taken into consideration. Plate’s aluminum core consists of six nanocomposite foam layers having different values of porosities. The porous composite core is also assumed to be strengthened with graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs). Various kinds of edge conditions are given for the smart sandwich plate subjected to the linearly distributed compressive loading. The nonlinear equilibrium equations of the smart sandwich plate are calculated using the virtual work principle. The Reissner–Mindlin plate model in the framework of the von-Kármán geometric nonlinearity is also included into formulation. The stability equations are also determined by applying the adjacent equilibrium criterion. The system of coupled differential equations is solved for various kinds of boundary conditions by utilizing the Galerkin technique. The obtained results are compared with the existing data in the literature and a good agreement is observed. Several numerical examples are produced and presented to explore the effects of important factors such as material and geometrical parameters on the thermo-electro-mechanical buckling resistance in the smart sandwich plates.