Vibration response of viscoelastic sandwich plate with magnetorheological fluid core and functionally graded-piezoelectric nanocomposite face sheets

Abstract

In this research, vibration analysis of a viscoelastic sandwich plate rested on a visco-Pasternak foundation is investigated. Sandwich plate consists of a magnetorheological (MR) fluid core and viscoelastic nanocomposite face sheets which include piezoelectric matrix and functionally graded carbon nanotubes (FG-CNTs) fiber. Core and face sheets are affected by applying magnetic and electric fields, respectively. The elastic medium is simulated by a visco-Pasternak model which is considered in terms of the effects of springiness, shear and damping of foundation. At first, the constitutive equations of sandwich plate are expressed by employing the geometric continuity conditions. Then, the equations of motion are derived by applying the energy method and Hamilton’s principle and an appropriate analytical approach is proposed to solve them. This approach can be considered as the different boundary conditions. Finally, the influences of various parameters such as the type of MR material, core to face sheets thickness ratio, volume fractions and symmetric distributions of CNTs in face sheets, magnetic and electric fields, viscoelastic constant of face sheets and elastic medium on the dimensionless natural frequencies of sandwich plate are studied. The results show that increasing core-to-face sheet thickness ratio leads to a decrease in the natural frequencies because the MR fluid core is softer than nanocomposite face sheets. Thus, the MR fluid core acts like a damper. Also, the loss factor of the MR fluid core decreases with increasing magnetic field intensity, and consequently, the natural frequency grows. In addition, increasing the volume fraction of CNTs causes the stiffness of the structure to increase. The results of this research can be utilized to realize applicable semi-active devices with controllable stiffness.