Effects of CNTs waviness and aspect ratio on vibrational response of FG-sector plate

Abstract

This paper is motivated by the lack of studies in the technical literature concerning to the influence of carbonnanotubes (CNTs) waviness and aspect ratio on the vibrational behavior of functionally graded nanocomposite annular sector plates resting on two-parameter elastic foundations. The carbon nanotube-reinforced (CNTR) plate has smooth variation of CNT fraction based on the power-law distribution in the thickness direction, and the material properties are also estimated by the extended rule of mixture. In this study, the classical theory concerning the mechanical efficiency of a matrix embedding finite length fibers has been modified by introducing the tube-to-tube random contact, which explicitly accounts for the progressive reduction of the tubes\' effective aspect ratio as the filler content increases. Parametric studies are carried out to highlight the influence of CNTs volume fraction, waviness and aspect ratio, boundary conditions and elastic foundation on vibrational behavior of FG-CNT thick sectorial plates. The study is carried out based on three-dimensional theory of elasticity and in contrary to two-dimensional theories, such as classical, the first- and the higher-order shear deformation plate theories, this approach does not neglect transverse normal deformations. The annular sector plate is assumed to be simply supported in the radial edges while any arbitrary boundary conditions are applied to the other two circular edges including simply supported, clamped and free. For an overall comprehension on 3-D vibration of annular sector plates, some mode shape contour plots are reported in this research work.