Nonlinear stress analysis of plates under thermo-mechanical loads

The aim of the present work is to carry out a simplified mathematical modelling for nonlinear stress analysis of plates under temperature changes and mechanical transverse loads. The material properties of the plate are proposed to be temperature-dependent. The geometrically nonlinear plate theory is employed to understand the stress distribution due to thermo-mechanical loads. A set of coupled nonlinear partial differential equations are solved using harmonic series expansion to find the static responses. Two boundary conditions are considered for simply supported plates, namely, movable edges and immovable edges. The accuracy of the results is checked by comparing with the output of other solution methods.