Thermal Buckling Analysis of Graphene Nanoplates Based on the Modified Couple Stress Theory using Finite Strip Method and Two-Variable Refined Plate Theory

Graphene is one of the nanostructured materials that has recently attracted the attention of many researchers. This is due to the increasing expansion of nanotechnology and the application of this nanostructure in technology and industry owing to its mechanical, electrical and thermal properties. Thermal buckling behavior of single-layered graphene sheets is studied in this paper. Given the failure of classical theories to consider the scale effects and the limitations of the nano-sized experimental investigations of nano-materials, the small-scale effect is taken into account in this study, by employing the modified couple stress theory which has only one scale parameter. On the other hand, the two-variable refined plate theory, which considers the shear deformations in addition to bending deformations, is used to define the displacement field and to formulate the problem. The developed finite strip method formulation is used to evaluate the critical buckling temperature of the nanoplates. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed by comparing the results of this study with the those in the literature. The effects of different boundary conditions, temperature changing patterns, aspect ratio, and the ratio of length parameter to thickness on the critical buckling temperature are considered and the results are presented in the form of Tables and Figures