Deformation and Stress Analysis under Thermal Loads of Functionally Graded Plates using Finite Element Method

A finite element model is constructed and developed to study the behavior of a FGM plate under thermomechanical loading in. A simply supported plate subjected to mechanical and thermal loads on its top and bottom surface is considered with suitable temperature and loading function that satisfy boundary conditions are used in this paper. The continuum is divided into 3600 elements and 4410 nodes using eight node hexahedral elements. The firstorder shear deformation plate model is exploited to investigate the uncoupled thermo mechanical behavior of functionally graded plates. A study is performed to illustrate the effect of thermal load and mechanical load in thickness direction of FGM plate. The volume fraction of the two constituent materials of the FGM plate is varied smoothly and continuously along the thickness of the plate. Results are computed for a FGM plate with material properties varying in the thickness direction.