The effect of material gradient on the static and dynamic response of layered functionally graded material plate using finite element method

This article focuses on the finite element analysis (FEA) of the nonlinear behavior of a layered functionally graded material (FGM) plate as concerns displacement, stresses, critical buckling load and fundamental frequency. The material properties of each layer in an FGM plate are assessed according to a ceramic based simple power law distribution and the rules of mixture. The finite element model of a layered FGM plate is developed using ANSYS®15.0 software. The developed finite element model is used to study the static and dynamic responses of an FGM plate. In this paper, the effects of power law distribution, thickness ratio, aspect ratio and boundary conditions are investigated for central displacement, transverse shear stress, transverse normal stress, critical buckling load and fundamental frequency, and the obtained FEA results are in sound agreement with the literature test data results. Since the FGM is used in a high temperature environment, the FE analysis is performed for the FGM plate under a thermal field and then correlated. Finally, the FGM plate is analyzed under a thermomechanical load by using the current FE concept.