A Dynamic Analysis of Randomly Oriented Functionally Graded Carbon Nanotubes/Fiber-Reinforced Composite Laminated Shells with Different Geometries

Abstract

The present study demonstrates the free vibration behavior of composite laminated shells reinforced by both randomly oriented single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and functionally graded fibers. The shell structures with different principal radii of curvature are considered, such as cylindrical, spherical, elliptical–paraboloid shell, hyperbolic–paraboloid shell, and plate. The volume fraction of the fibers has a linear variation along the shell thickness from layer to layer, while the volume fraction of CNTs is constant in all shell layers and uniformly distributed. The fiber-reinforced elements are distributed with three functions which are V-distribution, O-distribution, and X-distribution in addition to the uniform distribution. A numerical analysis was carried out systematically to validate the proposed solution. A new analytical solution is presented based on the Galerkin approach for shells and is exploited to illustrate the influence of some factors on the free vibration behavior of CNTs/fibe-reinforced composite (CNTs/F-RC) laminated shells, including the distributions and volume fractions, various boundary conditions, and geometrical properties of the reinforcement materials. The proposed solution is shown to be an effective theoretical tool to analyze the free vibration response of shells.