Buckling analysis of functionally graded carbon nanotubes reinforced composite (FG-CNTRC) plate.

Abstract

In this work, buckling responses of functionally graded single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) reinforced composite plates with temperature dependent material properties are investigated. The effective material properties of the composite plates are obtained using simple rule of mixture by introducing the CNT efficiency parameter under different thermal environment. In the present analysis, a suitable finite element model of the SWCNT reinforced composite plate is developed using ANSYS parametric design language code in ANSYS environment using Block-Lancoz’s method. An eight noded serendipity shell element (SHELL281) has been used for the discretisation of the developed simulation model from the ANSYS library. The buckling responses of the SWCNT composite plate have been obtained and verified with those of the available published results. The non-dimensional critical buckling load parameters under uniaxial compression, biaxial compression and biaxial compression and tension have been obtained by varying different parameters like, CNT volume fraction, temperature, thickness ratio and support conditions. Finally, the detailed parametric study has been carried out to reveal the influence of different design parameters on the buckling responses through the simulation study.