Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2021) 136: 1093
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01992-x

Regular Article

Thermoelastic buckling and post-buckling behavior of temperature-dependent nanocomposite pipes reinforced with CNTs

Mechanical Engineering Department, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

^a h_babaei@azad.ac.ir

Received: 13 July 2021
Accepted: 24 September 2021
Published online: 30 October 2021

Abstract

This research presents a comprehensive study on the thermal buckling and post-buckling behavior of nanocomposite pipes reinforced by carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The distribution profile of CNTs across the radius of nanocomposite pipe can be non-uniform which results in a functionally graded (FG) media. All the thermo-mechanical properties of the FG-CNT reinforced composite pipe which undergoes the uniform temperature rise loading are temperature-dependent. Different kinds of immovable boundary conditions such as simply supported, clamped-clamped, and clamped-rolling are considered. The principle of virtual displacement in conjunction with the higher-order shear deformation theory is employed to obtain the equilibrium equations of the nanocomposite pipe. The nonlinear governing equations are established with the aid of the von Kármán geometric measure and the uncoupled thermoelasticity theory. Utilizing the two-step perturbation technique, maximum deflection of the pipe in the post-buckling state is obtained by an explicit function of elevated temperature. Results of this paper are compared with the available data in the open literature for a homogeneous isotropic pipe. The influences of boundary conditions, the CNT distribution pattern, geometrical characteristics, and the volume fraction of CNTs upon the critical buckling temperature and thermal post-buckling path of nanocomposite pipes are discussed in detail. The novel numerical results of this research show that the maximum value of critical buckling temperatures belongs to the FG-X case of nanocomposite pipes.