Free vibration of piezoelectric FGM sandwich beam with porous core embedded in thermal environment and elastic foundation

Abstract

This paper aims to present thermo-electrical free vibration characteristics of functionally graded material (FGM) sandwich beam placed on the two-parameter elastic foundation. The beam is constructed of a foam core, two middle FGM layers, and two outer piezoelectric layers. It is assumed that the beam is subjected to a constant voltage and a uniform/linear temperature distribution. Physical properties of the core and two middle layers vary smoothly through the thickness according to the cosine and power-law forms, respectively. Lagrange equations in conjunction with the Reddy third-order beam theory is employed to derive the governing equations of motion. A simple polynomial trial function-based Ritz method is adopted for the approximation of the displacement field to obtain the vibration response. The correctness of the study is verified by comparisons with other authors’ published results. Influences of geometry parameters, material property distribution, applied voltage, elastic foundation, temperature distribution, temperature change, porosity coefficient, span-to-height ratio, and boundary conditions are investigated through parametric studies.