Flutter of carbon-based nanohybrid composite panels

Abstract

Recently, carbon-based composite aerospace and mechanical structures have considerable attention due to their great material and mechanical properties. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) or graphene platelets (GPLs) reinforcements for different matrices are common for the design of modern multilayer structures. In the present paper, the supersonic flutter of nanohybrid composite multilayer panels is examined and discussed. The nanohybrid multilayer panel is made of different technologically justified configurations of polymer layers reinforced by CNTs and GPLs The effective material properties of each CNTs and GPLs layer are determined according to two well-established homogenization techniques: the Mori–Tanaka scheme and the modified Halpin–Tsai model, respectively. Reddy’s third-order shear deformation theory is applied to avoid determining shear correction factors for different distributions of material properties. Hamilton’s principle and the first-order piston theory are applied to formulate aeroelastic coupled equations of motion of the panel. The numerical meshless method is employed to discretize dynamic equations and find generalized multi-parametric characteristic equations functionally dependent on the parameters of the structure with different boundary conditions. The accuracy of the obtained solution and results is examined by comparing the determined natural frequency and critical aerodynamic pressure with those obtained in previous studies. Then, a comprehensive parametric study is carried out to show the effects of hybridization of different distribution patterns of CNTs and GPLs, weight fractions, total layer number, and aspect ratio of hybrid composite panels on the flutter bounds. Results show that the present method provides a highly effective general numerical model for flutter analysis of hybrid nanocomposite panels with different boundary conditions for all thickness categories including thick plates. Moreover, an optimization nanoparticles distribution for the flutter of the nanohybrid composite panel has been obtained.