Vibration and Uncertainty Analysis of Functionally Graded Sandwich Plate Using Layerwise Theory

In the present study, free vibration analyses of porous functionally graded material (FGM) sandwich plates are carried out in thermal environment. Two types of sandwich plates such as sandwich with FGM face sheets and homogeneous core and sandwich with homogeneous face sheets and FGM core are considered for free vibration analysis with nonlinear temperature variation over the thickness direction. The metal and ceramic components are assumed to be temperature dependent. The higher-order layerwise theory is adopted with an eight-noded rectangular element to build a finite element model for free vibration analysis. A radial basis function network (RBFN) based surrogate model is developed to investigate the stochastic frequency response due to the uncertain material properties. The accuracy and the efficiency of the RBFN model are established by comparing the results with that of Monte Carlo simulation. Further, the developed surrogate model is implemented to perform various parametric studies and sensitivity analyses. The influence of the volume fraction index, types of porosity, and thermal gradient on the stochastic frequency response are analyzed. Though the influence of different stochastic input parameters is strongly dependent on the volume fraction index, the mass density of metal is found to be the most sensitive parameter for the sandwich plate with FGM face sheets and homogeneous core.