Buckling and free vibration analyses of composite sandwich plates reinforced by shape-memory alloy wires

Nowadays, shape-memory alloys (SMAs) are used in many applications to improve the mechanical behaviors of the structures. In this paper, the natural vibration and buckling behaviors of the composite sandwich plates reinforced by SMA wires are studied. Three-dimensional (3D) finite element method is employed to model and analyze the sandwich plates. The face sheets of the sandwich plates are considered to be layered orthotropic composite plate, while a soft isotropic material is used for the core. The face sheets are armed by the Ni-Ti-based SMA wires. The Active Property Tuning method is used for modeling the SMA-embedded sandwich plates. The modal and eigenvalue buckling analyses are performed to calculate the natural frequencies and buckling loads of the plates. The effects of plate's thickness, face sheet's thickness and plate aspect ratio and also boundary conditions on the natural frequencies and buckling loads of the plates are inspected. Comparison between obtained numerical results and those published in the literature confirms that the present modeling and vibration and buckling analyses of the SMA-reinforced composite sandwich plates are reliable and applicable.