Transient analysis of FGM plates bending under thermal loading: comparative study within classical and generalized thermoelasticity

In the classical thermoelasticty, there is coupling between thermal and elastic fields, in general, but the elastic and thermal excitations spread according to physically different laws. In classical thermodynamics, the temperature change propagates according to diffusion law. However, the heat pulses at low temperature propagate evidently with a finite velocity in view of waves similar to spreading of elastic excitations. A great effort has been spent in this matter and there are two main non-classical theories: Lord-Shulman theory and Green-Lindsay theory. In this paper, we compare the response of thin FGM plates under thermal load within the classical and non-classical theories of thermoelasticity. The variable material properties of plate (such as the Young’s modulus, thermal expansion coefficient, etc.) are allowed to be continuous functions of the position. The strong form meshless formulations for solution of considered initial-boundary value problems is developed in combination with Moving Least Squares (MLS) approximation scheme. The response of FGM plates on thermal loading is studied via numerical simulations with focusing on comparison of results obtained within the classical and generalized thermoelasticity. The numerical results concern also the parametric study of influence of gradation of material coefficients on bending of FGM plate