Free vibration analysis of circular sandwich plates with clamped FG face sheets

Free vibration of sandwich plates with temperature dependent functionally graded (FG) face sheets in various thermal environments is investigated. The material properties of FG face sheets are assumed to be temperature-dependent and vary continuously through the thickness according to a power-law distribution in terms of the volume fractions of the constituents. Also, the material properties of the core are assumed to be temperature dependent. The governing equations of motion in polar system and in free natural vibration are derived using Hamilton’s principle and Galerkin method is used to solve the equations and obtain the natural frequency. In-plane stresses of the core that usually are ignored in the vibration characteristics of the sandwich structures are considered in this formulation. The results obtained by Galerkin method for symmetric circular sandwich plate with fixed support is compared with finite element method that obtained by ABAQUS and good agreement is found. The results show that varying the power-law index and temperature have important effects on natural frequency.