Vibration analysis of FG-CNTRC plates with an arbitrarily shaped cutout based on the variational differential quadrature finite element method

The vibration analysis of functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite plates with the arbitrarily shaped cutout is presented using a novel numerical approach called variational differential quadrature finite element method (VDQFEM). The governing equations are expressed in matrix form based on Mindlin's plate theory. In the proposed numerical approach, the space domain of the plate is first transformed into a number of sub-domains known as finite elements. Then, the variational differential quadrature (VDQ) discretization method is used within each element to obtain the mass and stiffness matrices. In order to use the VDQ method, the irregular domain of the element is transformed into a regular one employing the mapping technique. Finally, the assemblage procedure is performed to present total mass and stiffness matrices. The introduced numerical approach can be effectively used for structural analysis of arbitrarily shaped plates. A wide range of comparative and convergence studies are outlined to show the performance of the method. It is observed that the numerical results are rapidly converged and the proposed solution strategy can be successfully applied to examine the vibration of FG-CNTRC plates with different cutouts.