Active vibration control of CNT-reinforced composite plates with piezoelectric layers based on Reddy's higher-order shear deformation theory

To date, the literature investigating the active vibration control of carbon nanotube reinforced composite (CNTRC) plates with piezoelectric layers is limited. Furthermore, studying this particular problem utilizing any of the element-free methods is missing. This paper presents a novel element-free IMLS-Ritz model based on Reddy's higher-order shear deformation theory to study this issue. Four carbon nanotubes (CNTs) distributions are considered including both uniform and functionally graded types. For all these distributions, the effective material properties of the CNTRC plates are calculated by the Mori–Tanaka method. A conversion study has been performed to select the appropriate values of nodes number and scaling factor that give accurate results compared to the literature. New detailed natural frequency results have been presented for various CNTs volume fractions, CNTs distribution types, dimensions ratios and boundary conditions. Parametric studies have been carried out to show the effects of boundary conditions, CNTs volume fraction, CNTs distribution type and piezoelectric layer thickness to total plate thickness ratio on the natural frequency increment between open and closed circuit conditions. A constant velocity feedback approach is adopted for the active vibration control of the composite plates and two positions of piezoelectric sensor and actuator layers are proposed.