Thermal buckling analysis of laminated composite plates using edge-based smoothed discrete shear gap method

In this paper, we analyze a thermal buckling behavior of laminated composite plates based on first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) using edge-based smoothed discrete shear gap method (ES–DSG). In the ES-DSG, only the linear approximation is necessary and the discrete shear gap method (DSG) for triangular plate elements is used to avoid the shear locking and spurious zero energy modes. In addition, the stiffness matrices are computed based on smoothing domains created by connecting two end-nodes of the edge to centroids of adjacent triangular elements. The temperature in the plates is assumed to be uniform distribution and rise. Several numerical examples are given to verify the reliability of the obtained results compared to other published solutions