Analysis of layered rectangular plates under thermo-mechanical loads considering temperature-dependent material properties

The analytical solutions are presented for the distributions of temperature, displacements, and stresses in simply-supported layered rectangular plates under thermo-mechanical loads. The material properties of every layer are temperature-dependent. A slice model is presented for discretization: dividing every layer into finite thin slices, the material properties within each slice are assumed to be uniform. The temperature varies along the thickness and follows the one-dimensional (1-D) heat conduction equations. An iterative algorithm is proposed for the prediction of the 1-D temperature field. Then, the exact three-dimensional (3-D) thermoelasticity theory and the transfer matrix technique are applied for the prediction of the displacement and stress fields in the plate. The influences of temperature can be divided into two parts: producing thermal deformations and thermal stresses and affecting the deformations and stresses induced by mechanical loads. Finally, the influences of the surface temperature and the layer thickness ratio on the thermo-mechanical responses of a sandwich plate are studied in detail.