Buckling and free vibrations of CNT-reinforced cross-ply laminated composite plates

Abstract This article deals with the investigation of free vibration and buckling behaviors of carbon nanotube (CNT)-reinforced cross-ply laminated composite plates. The plate kinematics is assumed to follow a first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT). After the coupled equations of motion and buckling are derived, the method of discrete singular convolution (DSC) is used for the numerical solution of the problems. Both the regularized Shannon’s and Lagrange’s delta kernels are used for spatial discretizing of the resulting governing equations of buckling and vibration of CNT-reinforced laminated plates. Natural frequencies and critical buckling loads are obtained for different cases. Wherever possible, the present DSC results are verified by comparing them with the existing analytical results available in the literature. Then, a detailed parametric study is performed to examine the effects of boundary conditions, CNT distributions and volume fraction, aspect ratio, length-to-width ratio, and number of layers on the frequencies and buckling loads.