Flutter analysis of sandwich plates with functionally graded face sheets in thermal environment

Abstract

This paper presents an analytical model for flutter analysis of sandwich plates with functionally graded face sheets in the thermal environment. The material properties of the face sheets are supposed to be temperature-dependent by a nonlinear distribution satisfying one-dimensional heat equation, and vary according to power law distribution in terms of the volume fractions along the thickness of the plate. The vibration of the sandwich plate is modeled on the basis of different plate theories including Mindlin theory, classical theory, exponential theory, third-order theory, sinusoidal theory, hyperbolic theory and fifth-order theory. Modified shear deformation theories applied herein are capable of considering inertia effects and transverse shear stresses. First order piston theory is utilized to model the aerodynamic load due to supersonic flow. The coupled governing equations are derived using Hamilton's principle and, Galerkin approach is applied to obtain vibrational characteristics and critical dynamic pressure of the system. Some comparisons with available results in the literature are performed to validate the present modeling, and excellent agreement is observed. Our attention is focused on analyzing the effects of different parameters such as thickness ratio, aspect ratio, thermal load, the thickness of face sheet and power law index on dynamic stability of the sandwich plate.