Instability of FGM rectangular hollow section (RHS) beam element under combined bending and compressive loads

In this paper, stability analysis of thin-walled functionally graded (FG) sandwich box beams under combined bending and axial forces was carried out. Based on higher order theory that includes sectional distortion and warping, a nonlinear displacement field of closed cross-section is adopted. The energy principle is applied in the context of elastic behavior of materials. Simple power-law is used to adjust the material properties in the thickness direction of each wall of FGM box beam. Ritz's method is adopted to obtain the nonlinear coupled equilibrium equations, and then the critical loads are obtained by means of the corresponding tangent stiffness matrix. A Finite Element simulation performed with the code ABAQUS software is used to verify the efficiency and accuracy of the present approach in lateral torsional buckling predictions. The effects of the power-law index and skin–core-skin thickness ratios on the critical loads of FG sandwich box beams are presented through several case studies. Moreover, the numerical solutions show that the previous effects play a significant role in the stability analysis of FG sandwich box beams.