Stability and vibration analysis of CNT-Reinforced functionally graded laminated composite cylindrical shell panels using semi-analytical approach

The present paper examined the buckling, postbuckling and vibration characteristics of pre-buckled and post-buckled laminated CNT reinforced composite (CNTRC) cylindrical shell panel made up of single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and isotropic matrix. The effective material properties of CNTRC panel are computed using extended rule-of mixture (ROM) method. Higher order shear deformation theory (HSDT) with von Karman type of nonlinearity is adopted to model the CNTRC cylindrical shell panel. Four different boundary conditions are considered. Besides uniform loading, different types of non-uniform in-plane load distribution such as triangular, trapezoidal, parabolic and partial edge loadings are considered. The internal stress distribution within the shell panel due to applied non-uniform loadings is evaluated by prebuckling analysis. Subsequently, via Hamilton's principle the governing partial differential equations of CNTRC laminated cylindrical shell panel are derived. Employing Galerkin's method and by neglecting the inertia terms the partial differential equations are reduced to a set of non-linear algebraic equation for the static problem. However, for dynamic problem the partial differential equations are converted to a set of ordinary differential equations. Beside parametric study the obtained numerical results from the present semi-analytical study illustrates the effects of CNT volume fraction, CNT dispersion profile, non-uniform load distribution and boundary conditions on the stability and vibration characteristics of CNTRC cylindrical panel.