Vibration analysis of functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite sandwich beams in thermal environment

Thermo-mechanical vibration of sandwich beams with a stiff core and face sheets made of functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite (FG-CNTRC) is investigated within the framework of Timoshenko beam theory. The material properties of FG-CNTRC are supposed to vary continuously in the thickness direction and are estimated through the rule of mixture and are considered to be temperature dependent. The governing equations and boundary conditions are derived by using Hamilton's principle and are solved using an efficient semi-analytical technique of the differential transform method (DTM). Comparison between the results of the present work and those available in literature shows the accuracy of this method. A parametric study is conducted to study the effects of carbon nanotube volume fraction, slenderness ratio, core-to-face sheet thickness ratio, and various boundary conditions on free vibration behavior of sandwich beams with FG-CNTRC face sheets. It is explicitly shown that the vibration characteristics of the curved nanosize beams are significantly influenced by the surface density effects.