Abstract Based on prebuckling consistent theory, the effect of boundary constraints on the bifurcation buckling for functionally graded material circular cylindrical shells subjected to axial compression in thermal environment is investigated. The analytic solution is obtained for prebuckling deformation coupling thermal and mechanical loading as well as initial geometrical imperfects. The nonlinear eigen value problem is derived by combining the approach of separating variables with the technique of finite difference to solve the governing equations of bifurcation buckling. The temperature dependence of material properties is taken into account in the analysis, the influence of temperature gradient along thickness, initial geometrical imperfection, volume fraction of material composite in the critical axial compressive loads is examined with respect to simply supported ends and clamped ends respectively. The results show that temperature sensitivity and imperfection sensitivity corresponding to clamped ends are stronger than those in simply supported ends, but become weaker with the increase of temperature gradient, and the volume fraction of material composite exerts little influence on imperfection sensitivity irrespective to boundary conditions at ends. Also it is revealed that the effect of boundary constraints on bifurcation buckling abates with the rise of amplitude of initial geometrical imperfections.
2011, Vol. 32 
