Buckling Load Analysis of Sigmoid Functionally Graded Timoshenko Beam on Pasternak Elastic Foundation

The development of many technologies that make our existence so comfortable has been intimately associated with the accessibility of suitable materials. In fact, early civilizations have been designated by the level of their materials development (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age). Thus, tens of thousands of different materials have evolved with rather specialized characteristics of materials. Many of our modern technologies require materials with unusual combinations of properties that cannot be met by the conventional metal alloys, Ceramics & Polymeric materials. In this project, you will get to know about a Functionally Graded Composite material which kind of solve the above problems. You will analyze this material using the Finite Element Method by modelling it using MATLAB.

The FGM is the one which can solve problems arising from the production of a new type of composite material. These materials are used in all engineering areas especially in civil & aerospace engineering. Composite materials will fail under extreme working conditions through a process called Delamination (separation of fibres from the matrix). This can happen for example, in high temperature application where two metals with a different coefficient of expansion are used. To solve this problem, researchers in Japan in the mid 1980s, confronted with this challenge in a hypersonic space plane project requiring a thermal barrier (with outside temperature of 2000K and inside temperature of 1000K across less than 10 mm thickness), came up with a novel material called Functionally Graded Material (FGM).