LAUSR

This paper presents the influence of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) waviness and aspect ratio on the vibrational behavior of functionally graded nanocomposite sandwich annular sector plates resting on two-parameter elastic foundations. The carbon nanotube-reinforced (CNTR) sandwich plate has smooth variation of CNT fraction along the thickness direction. The distributions of CNTs are considered functionally graded (FG) or uniform along the thickness and their mechanical properties are estimated by an extended rule of mixture. In this study, the classical theory concerning the mechanical efficiency of a matrix embedding finite length fibers has been modified by introducing the tube-to-tube random contact, which explicitly accounts for the progressive reduction of the tubes' effective aspect ratio as the filler content increases. Effects of CNT distribution, volume fraction, aspect ratio and waviness, and also effects of Pasternak's elastic foundation coefficients, sandwich plate thickness, face sheets thickness and plate aspect ratio are investigated on the free vibration of the sandwich plates with wavy CNT-reinforced face sheets. The study is carried out based on three-dimensional theory of elasticity and in contrary to two-dimensional theories, such as classical, the first- and the higher-order shear deformation plate theories, this approach does not neglect transverse normal deformations. The sandwich annular sector plate is assumed to be simply supported in the radial edges while any arbitrary boundary conditions are applied to the other two circular edges including simply supported, clamped and free.