An axiomatic/asymptotic evaluation of best theories for isotropic metallic and functionally graded plates employing non-polynomic functions

This paper presents Best Theory Diagrams (BTDs) constructed from various non-polynomial terms to identify best plate theories for metallic and functionally graded plates. The BTD is a curve that provides the minimum number of unknown variables necessary to obtain a given accuracy or the best accuracy given by a given number of unknown variables. The plate theories that belong to the BTD have been obtained using the Axiomatic/Asymptotic Method (AAM). The different plate theories reported are implemented by using the Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF). Navier-type solutions have been obtained for the case of simply supported plates loaded by a bisinusoidal transverse pressure with different length-to-thickness ratios. The BTDs built from non-polynomial functions are compared with BTDs using Maclaurin expansions. The results suggest that the plate models obtained from the BTD using non-polynomial terms can improve the accuracy obtained from Maclaurin expansions for a given number of unknown variables of the displacement field.