Narrow Results

We demonstrate the synthesis of zinc oxide microshells by thermal evaporation of ZnO and Zn powders. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) observations reveal that the products are ZnO microshells with hollow cores, of which the wall thickness is about several hundred nanometers. The possible growth process is discussed.

A nonclassical first-order shear deformation shell model is developed to analyze the axial buckling and dynamic stability of microshells made of functionally graded materials (FGMs). For this purpose, the modified couple stress elasticity theory is implemented into the first-order shear deformation shell theory. Unlike the classical shell theory, the newly developed shell model contains an internal material length scale parameter to capture efficiently the size effect. By using the Hamilton's principle, the higher-order governing equations and boundary conditions are derived. Afterward, the Navier solution is utilized to predict the critical axial buckling loads of simply-supported functionally graded (FG) microshells. Moreover, the governing equations are written in the form of Mathieu–Hill equations and then Bolotin's method is employed to determine the instability regions. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the influences of static load factor, axial wave number, dimensionless length scale parameter, material property gradient index, length-to-radius and length-to-thickness aspect ratios on the axial buckling and dynamic stability responses of FGM microshells. It is revealed that size effect plays an important role in the value of critical axial buckling load and instability region of FGM microshells especially corresponding to those with lower aspect ratios.