Effect of Surface Stress on the Buckling of Nonlocal Nanoplates Subject to Material Uncertainty

Abstract

Abstract At the nano scale, the effect of surface stress becomes prominent as well as the so-called small scale effect. Furthermore due to difficulties in making accurate measurements at nano-scale as well as due to due to molecular defects and manufacturing tolerances, there exists a certain degree of uncertainty in the determination of the material properties of nano structures This, in turn, introduces some degree of uncertainty in the computation of the mechanical response of the nano-scale components. In the present study a convex model is employed to take surface tension, small scale parameter and the elastic constants as uncertain-but-bounded quantities in the buckling analysis of rectangular nanoplates. The objective is to determine the lowest buckling load for a given level of uncertainty to obtain a conservative estimate by taking the worst-case variations of material properties. Moreover the sensitivity of the buckling load to material uncertainties is also investigated.