Vibration and stability of initially stressed functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced hybrid composite plates in thermal environments

Abstract

The vibration and stability of hybrid functionally graded (FG) composite plates subject to an arbitrary initially stress in thermal environments is investigated. The plate is reinforced by single walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Various profiles of CNTs distributions and volume fractions of hybrid nanocomposite plates are considered. Based on the perturbation method, the governing equations for the hybrid nanocomposite plate considering the effects of non-uniform initial stresses are established. The effects of the CNTs volume fraction, CNTs distribution type, layer thickness ratio, temperature and initial stress on the buckling loads and natural frequencies of hybrid nanocomposite plates are studied in detail.