Mechanical and thermal buckling loads of rectangular FG plates by using higher-order unified formulation

In this paper, by using the Carrera unified formulation, a higher-order plate theory, in the framework of FEM, the mechanical and thermal buckling loads of functionally graded (FG) plates have been formulated by linearized buckling analysis. The effects of convective heat transfer with the neighboring environments have been taken into account in the thermal buckling formulations. The buckling instability of several FG plates under mechanical loads as well as uniform, linear, and nonlinear thermal loads have been investigated. The obtained results indicate that the order of the plate theory and convective heat transfer boundary conditions significantly affects critical buckling loads.