Flexural Behaviour of Functionally Graded Nanotube Reinforced Sandwich Spherical Panel

Abstract

In the current work, flexural behavior of functional graded the sandwich spherical panel were examined under thermal environment. Face sheet of sandwich structure are reinforced by carbon nanotube material categorized by functional and core face is composed of homogeneous isotropic content. Physical properties of both fiber and matrix are assumed to be temperature-dependent. First-order shear deformation theory of sandwich panel model developed in the structure and governing equations of motion derived by using variational principle. For the discretization purpose a suitable shell element has been employed from the ANSYS library and the responses are computed using a parametric design language (APDL) coding. The performance and accuracy of the developed model has been established through the convergence and validation by comparing the obtained results with previously published results. Finally, the influence of different geometrical parameters and material properties on the flexural behaviour of the sandwich spherical panel in thermal environment has been investigated through various numerical illustrations and discussed in details