Thermoelastic Deflection Responses of CNT Reinforced Sandwich Shell Structure using Finite Element Method

Abstract

The bending responses of nanotube-reinforced curved sandwich shell panel structure are studied under the influence of the thermomechanical loading. Further, the temperature dependent material properties of the sandwich structure are assumed to evaluate the exact responses. In addition, the face sheets of the sandwich construction are modeled using different grading pattern through the panel thickness. The final form of the equilibrium equation of the deflected sandwich structure obtained by minimising the total potential energy functional. Now, the equation is solved computationally via a suitable computer code (MATLAB) using the novel higher-order kinematics including the finite element method. The constancy and the accuracy of the current finite element solutions are verified by solving a different kind of numerical examples as same as the published examples. The effect of parameters associated with structural stiffness and the flexural behaviour of the nanotube-reinforced curved sandwich structural panel are examined together with the unlike temperature distributions (uniform and linear) and discussed the final conclusions in detail.