Investigation of thermal preloading and porosity effects on the nonlocal nonlinear instability of FG nanobeams with geometrical imperfection

Abstract

Abstract The aim of the present research is twofold. The first is to present a study on nonlinear thermo-mechanical bending and thermal postbuckling analysis of functionally graded (FG) porous perfect/imperfect nanobeam according to the nonlocal elasticity theory. The second, concurrent aim is to address the snap-through phenomenon in the thermally preloaded graded porous nanobeams due to lateral mechanical load. Two types of thermal loading including, uniform temperature rise and heat conduction through the thickness as well as two cases of porosity distribution, including uniform and uneven, are considered. Geometrically imperfect FG porous nanobeam with four different types of immovable boundary conditions is also taken into account. Thermo-mechanical material properties of the porous nanobeam are assumed to be position-dependent according to the modified rule of mixture. The nonlinear equilibrium equations are constructed using the Euler–Bernoulli beam model and von-Karman type of geometrical nonlinearity. Chebyshev polynomial based Ritz method is utilized into the principle of virtual displacement to obtain the matrix representation of the nonlocal governing equations. Two different strategies, including the Newton–Raphson technique and direct displacement control scheme, are first proposed to extract the nonlinear bending and postbuckling curves of the graded nanobeam. Afterwards, to capture the snapping behavior and trace the path beyond the limit loads of the thermally preloaded nanobeam, the cylindrical arch-length technique is adopted. Numerical results are provided to explore the effect of different parameters such as the power-law index, nonlocal parameter, boundary conditions, porosity distribution, thermal loading, and imperfection amplitude on the nonlinear thermo-mechanical bending and instability of the FG nanobeam.