Abstract
This paper is concerned with the thermal buckling problem of an inhomogeneous rectangular plate due to partial heating. In such case, the problem becomes to be more complicated because the in-plane thermoelasticity problem should be solved to obtain the distribution of in-plane stresses. Thereafter, the thermal buckling analysis must be carried out. It is assumed that the material properties are changed in the thickness direction with the power law of the coordinate variable. The critical buckling temperatures are calculated using Galerkin method. Effects of the inhomogeneous material properties, aspect ratio and width-to-thickness ration on critical buckling temperature are examined.
