Effects of random system properties on the thermal buckling analysis of laminated composite plates

This paper examines the effect of random system properties on thermal buckling load of laminated composite plates under uniform temperature rise having temperature dependent properties using HSDT. The system properties such as material properties, thermal expansion coefficients and thickness of the laminate are modeled as independent random variables. A C0 finite element is used for deriving the eigenvalue problem. A Taylor series based first-order perturbation technique is used to handle the randomness in the system properties. Second-order statistics of the thermal buckling load are obtained. The results are validated with those available in the literature and Monte Carlo simulation.