Nonlocal and surface effects on the buckling behavior of flexoelectric sandwich nanobeams

ABSTRACT

In this article, an analytical approach is presented to study the surface and flexoelectric effects on the buckling characteristics of an embedded piezoelectric sandwich nanobeam. According to the nonlocal elasticity theory, the flexoelectricity is believed to be authentic for size-dependent properties in nanostructures. The boundary conditions and the governing equations are derived by Hamilton's principle and are solved by Navier method. The results obtained from the present work show that the nonlocal term has an important reduction on the critical load and also the flexoelectricity shows an increasing influence on the buckling loads of the sandwich nanobeam, especially at lower thicknesses.

KEYWORDS:

• Buckling
• piezoelectric sandwich nanobeam
• flexoelectricity
• surface effect
• nonlocal elasticity theory