Vibration analysis of CNT-reinforced thick laminated composite plates based on Reddy's higher-order shear deformation theory

In this paper, free vibration behavior of carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforced functionally graded thick laminated composite plates utilizing Reddy's higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT) is studied. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to incorporate HSDT with one of the element-free approaches to investigate this issue. The element-free IMLS-Ritz method is employed and four types of CNT distributions are considered. The resulting effective material properties of the CNT-reinforced composite are estimated by a detailed and straightforward Mori–Tanaka approach. The numerical results have been compared with the literature showing excellent agreement. Considering various CNT orientation angles, a parametric study showing the effects of CNT volume fraction, plate aspect ratio, plate width-to-thickness ratio and number of plate's layers on the non-dimensional natural frequencies is investigated. Finally, the influence of boundary conditions on the sequence of the first six mode shapes for various lamination arrangements is presented.