Effect of continuously grading fiber orientation face sheets on vibration of sandwich panels with FGM core

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate effect of continuously grading fiber orientation face sheets on free vibration of sandwich panels with functionally graded core using generalized power-law distribution. The benefit of using generalized power-law distribution is to illustrate and present useful results arising from symmetric, asymmetric and classic profiles. The fiber-reinforced composite material studied in the present work consists of silicon carbide fibers embedded in titanium matrix with the fiber volume fraction and fiber orientation graded in the radial direction. The face sheets have variation of the fiber orientation while the core has variation of fiber volume fraction. Generalized differential quadrature (GDQ) method is used to yield natural frequencies of the simply supported functionally graded sandwich (FGSW) panels on the basis of the 2-D, linear and small strain elasticity theory. The fast rate of convergence of the method is demonstrated and comparison studies are carried out to establish its very high accuracy and versatility. In this research work, a detailed parametric study is carried out to highlight the influences of continuously grading fiber orientation face sheets and different profile of fiber volume fraction and fiber orientation on the vibration characteristics of the FGSW panels. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.