Free vibration analysis of honeycomb doubly curved shell integrated with CNT-reinforced piezoelectric layers

The present article studies free vibration analysis of sandwich doubly curved shell composed of a honeycomb core and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) reinforced piezoelectric face-sheets. First-order shear deformation theory as well as Hamilton's principle is employed to derive the governing equations of motion. The effective material properties of core and face-sheets are estimated using the Gibson's formula and extended rule of mixture, respectively. The governing equations of motion are solved for simply supported boundary conditions to investigate the variation of natural frequencies of sandwich doubly curved shell in terms of important parameters of core and face-sheets such as side length ratio and length to thickness ratio of honeycomb cell, volume fraction, and distribution of CNTs and overall geometric parameters of the sandwich doubly curved shell. It is concluded that the maximum and minimum values of natural frequencies are obtained for FG-VA and FG-AV, respectively.

Automated summary

This article investigates the free vibration analysis of a sandwich doubly curved shell composed of a honeycomb core and carbon nanotubes reinforced piezoelectric face-sheets. The governing equations of motion are derived using first-order shear deformation theory and Hamilton's principle, and the natural frequencies of the sandwich doubly curved shell are obtained by solving the governing equations under simply supported boundary conditions. The study reveals the variations of natural frequencies in relation to key parameters of the core and face-sheets.