Refined and advanced models for multilayered plates and shells embedding functionally graded material layers

The present work investigates the static response problem of multilayered plates and shells embedding functionally graded material (FGM) layers. Carrera's unified formulation (CUF) is employed to obtain several hierarchical refined and advanced two-dimensional models for plates and shells. The refined models are based on the principle of virtual displacements. The advanced models, based on Reissner's mixed variational theorem, permit the transverse shear and normal stresses to be a priori modelled. Refined and advanced models are developed in both equivalent single layer and layer wise multilayer approaches. CUF is also employed to describe the continuous variation of elastic properties in the thickness direction for the embedded FGM layers. The numerical results, which are restricted to simply supported plates/shells loaded by a harmonic distribution of transverse pressure, show that the use of refined and advanced models, based on CUF, is mandatory with respect to the classical theories that are widely employed for isotropic and one-layered structures. Furthermore, advanced models lead to a quasi-3D description of the bending problem for FGM plates and shells. New benchmarks are considered in order to investigate the possible benefits of introducing FGM layers into common multilayered structures. It has been concluded that significant benefits can be obtained by employing opportune values for [image omitted]-hFGM parameters, where [image omitted] is the exponent of the thickness law for the FGM elastic properties and hFGM is the thickness of the embedded FGM layers. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.