Complementary effects on vibration characteristics of functionally graded graphene reinforced magnetorheological elastomer sandwich plates

This study proposes a novel method to improve the vibration characteristics of sandwich plates based on the complementary effects of various materials. To investigate the complementary effects, a unified modeling method on the functionally graded graphene-reinforced layers magnetorheological elastomer (FGGR-MRE) sandwich plate is proposed, and the influence mechanism of internal and external factors on the complementary effect is clarified. Four novel material distributed profiles are proposed to define the nonlinear interaction be-tween the MRE and FGGR layers, and a novel constitutive relationship of the proposed plate is established with the magnetic-mechanical coupling via the Maxwell's equation. Moreover, the dynamic characteristics of the FGGR-MRE sandwich plates are obtained by employing the modified Fourier series and the Rayleigh-Ritz method. Finally, the convergence and accuracy of the proposed model are verified under free and forced vi-bration conditions, and numerical investigations are carried to examine the complementary effects of the FGGR-MRE sandwich plate. The results show that the introduction of graphene platelets (GPLs) can greatly increase the resonance frequency of the sandwich plate, while the MRE can significantly accelerate the vibration attenuation of the structure. Compared with the traditional design method, the complementary effects-based design method can comprehensively improve the vibration characteristics of sandwich plates.

Automated summary

This study proposes a novel method to improve the vibration characteristics of sandwich plates by introducing complementary effects of graphene and magnetorheological elastomer materials. By establishing a unified model and functional gradient material distribution curves, the internal and external factors affecting the complementary effects are investigated. The proposed method is verified to be convergent and accurate in numerical simulations.