Three-dimensional free vibration analysis of functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite plates with various boundary conditions

A unified formulation of finite prism methods (FPMs) based on Reissner's mixed variational theorem is developed for the three-dimensional (3D) free vibration analysis of functionally graded (FG) carbon nanotube-reinforced composite (CNTRC) plates and laminated fiber-reinforced composite (FRC) plates, the edge conditions of which are considered such that one pair of opposite edges is simply supported and the other pair may be combinations of free, clamped or simply supported edges. The single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and polymer are regarded as the reinforcements and matrices, respectively, to produce the CNTRC plate. Four different distributions of CNTs varying in the thickness direction are considered (i.e. the uniformly distributed, and FG V-, rhombus-, and X-type variations), and the through-thickness distributions of effective material properties of the CNTRC plate are determined using the rule of mixtures. In the formulation, the CNTRC/FRC plate is divided into a number of finite prisms in the x- domain, in which the trigonometric functions and Lagrange polynomials are used to interpolate the y-direction and x- plane variations for the primary variables of each individual prism, respectively, and the related orders used for expansion of assorted primary variables in the thickness coordinate can be freely chosen. It is shown that the eight- and nine-node quadratic FPM solutions of frequency parameters of simply supported, CNTRC plates and laminated FRC plates are in excellent agreement with the exact 3D solutions available in the literature, and with the ones obtained using the ANSYS software for those plates with various boundary conditions.