Three Dimensional Mechanical and Thermal Buckling Analysis of Bidirectional Functionally Graded Cylindrical Shells Using a Radial Point Interpolation Method

This paper considers linear buckling analysis of thick cylindrical shells subjected to external pressure and thin cylindrical shells subjected to thermal loading using three dimensional theory of elasticity. the shell is graded in both radial and axial directions and the material properties are assumed varying as Mori-Tanaka form of thickness and axial coordinates variables. the governing equations are solved by mesh free method using radial point interpolation method. uniform and linear temperature raise in shell thickness is considered for thermal buckling. the influence of the functionally graded indexes and the boundary conditions on the buckling external pressure and the buckling temperature difference in addition the influence of thermal raising on buckling external pressure are carefully discussed. the results are validated with the known data in the literature and shows the accuracy of the mesh free method.