THERMAL STRESS ANALYSIS OF AXIALLY LAYERED FUNCTIONALLY GRADED BEAMS USING FINITE ELEMENT AND TAGUCHI METHODS

The aim of this paper is to investigate the thermal stress analysis of axially layered functionally graded beams under clamped-clamped (C-C) boundary conditions using finite element software which named ANSYS V13 parametric design language (APDL). The beams were made as three layers using functionally graded materials with Zirconia (ceramic) and Aluminum (metal) systems. The order of the layers of the beams was designed using L9 orthogonal array depending on Taguchi Method and thus nine different beam configurations were used. Analysis of signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio was performed to determine the effects of optimum levels of layers on the thermal stress characteristic. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was evaluated to carry out the meaningful layers and the percentage contributions of the layers on the thermal stress response. According to the results, the most effective layers on responses were found to be Layer 1 with 75.70 % contribution, Layer 2 with 21.05 % contribution, and Layer 3 with 3.23 % contribution respectively. In addition, the increase of Young's modulus and Thermal expansion values of the layers lead to the thermal stress results of axially layered functionally graded beams. This paper can be determined as a reference for thermal stress analysis of the axially layered beams produced functionally graded materials consists of ceramic and metal contents under clamped-clamped boundary conditions.