Stress analysis and material tailoring in isotropic linear thermoelastic incompressible functionally graded rotating disks of variable thickness

We analyze axisymmetric deformations of a rotating disk with its thickness, mass density, thermal expansion coefficient and shear modulus varying in the radial direction. The disk is made of a rubberlike material that is modeled as isotropic, linear thermoelastic and incompressible. We note that the hydrostatic pressure in the constitutive relation of the material is to be determined as a part of the solution of the problem since it cannot be determined from the strain field. The problem is analyzed by using an Airy stress function u. The non-homogeneous ordinary differential equation with variable coefficients for u is solved either analytically or numerically by the differential quadrature method. We have also analyzed the challenging problem of tailoring the variation of either the shear modulus or the thermal expansion coefficient in the radial direction so that a linear combination of the hoop stress and the radial stress is constant in the disk. For a rotating annular disk we present the explicit expression of the thermal expansion coefficient for the hoop stress to be uniform within the disk. For a rotating solid disk we give the exact expressions for the shear modulus and the thermal expansion coefficient as functions of the radial coordinate so as to achieve constant hoop stress. Numerical results for a few typical problems are presented to illuminate effects of material inhomogeneities on deformations of a hollow and a solid rotating disk. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.