Accurate Critical Buckling Load/Temperature of Thick Annular Sector Plates.

In this paper, stability analysis of thick annular sector plates under mechanical and thermal loads based on third-order shear deformation theory (TSDT) is investigated. The equilibrium and stability equations based on TSDT are obtained and solved analytically by doing some mathematical manipulation. Then, for nine possible boundary conditions, the buckling load and temperature are calculated and compared with those obtained using different plate theories. As the results show, for boundary conditions that include simply supported and clamped edges, the minimum value for buckling load and temperature is predicted by first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) and maximum value is predicted by classical plate theory (CPT). Also, for boundary conditions containing free edges, the value obtained by TSDT is larger than that obtained using CPT and FSDT for some values of thickness/length ratio. It is worthy to mention that the results obtained from CPT for boundary conditions containing free edges in a wide range of thickness/length ratio are acceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]