Thermal vibration and buckling analysis of functionally graded carbon nanotube reinforced composite quadrilateral plate

Abstract

This paper investigates the thermal vibration and buckling of the functionally graded carbon nanotube reinforced composite (FG-CNTRC) quadrilateral plate using the meshless method. Four distributions of the reinforcements along the thickness direction are considered, which are the uniform distributions (UD), FG-V, FG-O and FG-X. The corresponding effective material properties including Young's modulus, mass density, Poisson's ratio and thermal expansion coefficients are estimated by the rule of mixture with the CNT efficiency parameters accounting for the size-dependence. The first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) with the consideration of thermal effects is employed. Based on Hamilton's principle and the moving least square (MLS) approximation, the discrete governing equations for the vibration of the FG-CNTRC plate are derived. The free vibration of the regular and irregular plates with and without the temperature effect are considered respectively, and the corresponding natural frequencies and mode shapes are obtained by the eigenvalue problem. The stability analysis of the uniaxial and biaxial mechanical and thermal buckling are also conducted subsequently. The effects of the volume fraction, distribution pattern, geometrical characteristics and temperature on the buckling behaviors of the CNTRC quadrilateral plate are discussed in detail.