Thermo-mechanical interactions in a functionally graded elastic material with voids and gravity field

Present research is concerned with the study of two-dimensional disturbances in a non-homogeneous, isotropic, thermoelastic medium with voids and gravity under the purview of Lord–Shulman (LS) model of generalized thermoelasticity. The formulation is subjected to a thermal shock. All the mechanical and thermal properties of the solid are supposed to vary exponentially with distance. Normal mode technique is employed to obtain the exact expressions for the displacement components, stresses, change in volume fraction field and temperature field. These are also calculated numerically for a magnesium crystal-like material and depicted through graphs to observe the variations of the considered physical quantities. Influences of non-homogeneity, gravitational field, voids and relaxation time on the physical quantities are carefully analyzed. A comparison between the models of coupled thermoelasticity theory and LS theory is also presented.