Shear and Flexural Buckling Modes of a Spherical Sandwich Shell in a Centrosymmetric Temperature Field Inhomogeneous across the Thickness

Problems on buckling modes (BMs) are considered for a spherical sandwich shell with thin isotropic external layers and a transversely soft core of arbitrary thickness in a centrosymmetric temperature field inhomogeneous across the shell thickness. For their statement, the two-dimensional equations of the theory of moderate bending of thin Kirchhoff–Love shells are used for the external layers, with regard for their interaction with the core; for the core, maximum simplified geometrically nonlinear equations of thermoelasticity theory, in which a minimum number of nonlinear summands is retained to correctly describe its pure shear BM, are utilized. An exact analytical solution to the problem on initial centrosymmetric deformation of the shell is found, assuming that the temperature increments in the external layers are constant across their thickness. It is shown that the three-dimensional equations for the core, linearized in the neighborhood of the solution, can be integrated along the radial coordinate and reduced to two two-dimensional differential equations, which supplement the six equations that describe the neutral equilibrium of the external layers. It is established that the system of eight differential equations of stability, upon introduction of new unknowns in the form of scalar and vortical potentials, splits into two uncoupled sets of equations. The first of them has two kinds of solutions, by which the pure shear BM is described at an identical value of the parameter of critical temperature. The second system describes a mixed flexural BM, whose realization, at definite combinations of determining parameters of the shell and over wide ranges of their variation, is possible for critical parameters of temperature by orders of magnitude exceeding the similar parameter of shear BM.