Analysis of functionally graded material plates using triangular elements with cell-based smoothed discrete shear gap method

Abstract: In this paper, a cell based smoothed finite element method with discrete shear gap technique is employed to study the static bending, free vibration, mechanical and thermal buckling behaviour of functionally graded material (FGM) plates. The plate kinematics is based on the first order shear deformation theory and the shear locking is suppressed by a discrete shear gap method. The shear correction factors are evaluated by employing the energy equivalence principle. The material property is assumed to be temperature dependent and graded only in the thickness direction. The effective properties are computed by using the Mori-Tanaka homogenization method. The accuracy of the present formulation is validated against available solutions. A systematic parametric study is carried out to examine the influence the gradient index, the plate aspect ratio, skewness of the plate and the boundary conditions on the global response of the FGM plates. The effect of a centrally located circular cutout on the global response is also studied.