Thermal effects on the stability of circular graphene sheets via nonlocal continuum mechanics

Abstract

Recently, graphene sheets have shown significant potential for environmental engineering applications such as wastewater treatment. Different non-classical theories have been used for modeling of such nano-sized systems to take account of the effect of small length scale. Among all size-dependent theories, the nonlocal elasticity theory has been commonly used to examine the stability of nano-sized structures. Some research works have been reported about the mechanical behavior of rectangular nanoplates with the consideration of thermal effects. However, in comparison with the rectangular graphene sheets, research works about the nauoplates of circular shape are very limited, especially for the buckling properties with thermal effects. Hence, in this paper, an axisymmetric buckling analysis of circular single-layered graphene sheets (SLGS) is presented by decoupling the nonlocal equations of Eringen theory. Constitutive relations are modified to describe the nonlocal effects. The governing equations are derived using equilibrium equations of the circular plate in polar coordinates. Numerical solutions for buckling loads are computed using Galerkin method. It is shown that nonlocal effects play an important role in the buckling of circular nanoplates. The effects of the small scale on the buckling loads considering various parameters such as the radius of the plate, radius-to-thickness ratio, temperature change and mode numbers are investigated.