Thuc (2015) A refined higher-order shear deformation theory for bending, vibration and buckling analysis of functionally graded sandwich plates. Steel and Composite Structures, 18 (1 Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University's research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html This document may differ from the final, published version of the research and has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies. To read and/or cite from the published version of the research, please visit the publisher's website (a subscription may be required.)A refined higher-order shear deformation theory for bending, vibration and buckling analysis of functionally graded sandwich plates Abstract. A refined higher-order shear deformation theory for bending, vibration and buckling analysis of functionally graded sandwich plates is presented in this paper. It contains only four unknowns, accounts for a hyperbolic distribution of transverse shear stress and satisfies the traction free boundary conditions. Equations of motion are derived from Hamilton's principle. The Navier-type and finite element solutions are derived for plate with simply-supported and various boundary conditions, respectively. Numerical examples are presented for functionally graded sandwich plates with homogeneous hardcore and softcore to verify the validity of the developed theory. It is observed that the present theory with four unknowns predicts the response accurately and efficiently.