Suitable radial grading may considerably increase buckling loads of FGM circular plates

In this paper, we study buckling of radially FGM circular plates. In a previous study, a fourth-order polynomial expressing the exact solution of a linear elastic problem was used as buckling mode shape. To generalise such investigation, in this contribution the buckling mode is postulated to take the shape of a fifth-order polynomial function of the radial coordinate. The flexural rigidity is consequently sought as a polynomial of suitable order, expressing the functional grading. New solutions in closed form are then obtained by a semi-inverse method. It is found that suitable choices of functional grading may increase the buckling load up to 246% with respect to the homogeneous and uniform cases.