Electro-thermo-mechanical vibration and stability analyses of double-bonded micro composite sandwich piezoelectric tubes conveying fluid flow

Abstract

• Development of size-dependent electro-thermo-mechanical vibration and stability of flow-conveying double-bonded micro tubes. • Employing modified strain gradient theory to consider size dependent effect for sandwich piezoelectric micro composite tube. • Simulating micro composite tubes rested in an orthotropic elastic medium. • Applying non-uniform temperature distribution. • Employing the bifurcation curves for system instability using GDQM. New sandwich panels and tubes have widely applications in nanotechnology such as transportation, naval, aerospace industries, micro and nanoelectromechanical systems and fluid storage. For example, carotid arteries play an important role to high blood rate control that they have a similar structure with flow conveying cylindrical shells. In the current study, stability and free vibration analyses of double-bonded micro composite sandwich piezoelectric tubes conveying fluid flow embedded in an orthotropic foundation under electro-thermo-mechanical loadings are presented. In fact, this work can be provided a valuable background for more research and further experimental investigation. It is assumed that the micro tubes are made of flexible material and smart piezoelectric composites reinforced by carbon nanotubes as core and face sheets, respectively. Energy method and Hamilton's principle are applied to derive the governing equations of motions based on Euler–Bernoulli beam model and using modified strain gradient theory. Moreover, generalized differential quadrature method is used to discretize and solve the governing equations of motions. Numerical results are investigated to predict the influences of length-to-radius, thickness of face sheets-to-thickness of core ratio, temperature changes, orthotropic elastic medium, Knudsen number, and carbon nanotubes volume fraction on the dimensionless natural frequencies and critical flow velocity of sandwich double-bonded piezoelectric micro composite tubes. The results of this article show that increasing the thickness ratio, volume fraction carbon nanotubes and orthotropic elastic constants lead to enhance the dimensionless natural frequency and stability of system, while decrease these parameters with increasing the temperature and length-to-radius ratio.