title: Free vibration of functionally graded carbon-nanotube-reinforced composite plates with cutout.
abstract: During the past five years, it has been shown that carbon nanotubes act as an exceptional reinforcement for composites. For this reason, a large number of investigations have been devoted to analysis of fundamental, structural behavior of solid structures made of carbon-nanotube-reinforced composites (CNTRC). The present research, as an extension of the available works on the vibration analysis of CNTRC structures, examines the free vibration characteristics of plates containing a cutout that are reinforced with uniform or nonuniform distribution of carbon nanotubes. The first-order shear deformation plate theory is used to estimate the kinematics of the plate. The solution method is based on the Ritz method with Chebyshev basis polynomials. Such a solution method is suitable for arbitrary in-plane and out-of-plane boundary conditions of the plate. It is shown that through a functionally graded distribution of carbon nanotubes across the thickness of the plate, the fundamental frequency of a rectangular plate with or without a cutout may be enhanced. Furthermore, the frequencies are highly dependent on the volume fraction of carbon nanotubes and may be increased upon using more carbon nanotubes as reinforcement.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Qom, Qom, Iran.
authors.forename: Mostafa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mirzaei
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Engineering, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran.
authors.forename: Yaser
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kiani
keywords: Chebyshev polynomials; Ritz method; cutout; functionally graded carbon-nanotube-reinforced composite