A reduced-order solution for critical buckling temperature of thin-walled structures

This work presents a reduced-order solution for the thermoelastic geometrically nonlinear response of simply-supported thin-walled structures subjected to the purely thermal load. Previously, the reduced-order method was only applicable to the buckling problem with a fixed temperature value. Now, the method is reformulated to achieve the critical buckling temperature from the thermoelastic geometrically nonlinear buckling analysis. The thermal buckling problem is represented using the thermal expansion model and its equivalent mechanical model, respectively. For the equivalent mechanical model, the simply-supported constraints need to be partially released and the temperature field is converted to be a thermal load. The reduced-order model is constructed based on the improve Koiter theory for thermal buckling analysis of the equivalent mechanical model. The thermoelastic geometrically nonlinear response is traced using the reduced-order solution together with a predictor-corrector process. The reduced-order solution of the equivalent mechanical model is validated by fully nonlinear solution of the thermal expansion model. Various plates and shells are selected to demonstrate the accuracy and highly efficiency of the proposed method for thermal buckling analysis.