Free vibration analysis of rotating functionally graded microbeams

The free vibration features of rotating functionally graded microbeams in thermal environmentare presented in this paper. The governing equations are extracted on the basis of the Euler-Bernoulli beam assumptions beside the modified couple stress theory. The finite elementmethod is applied on the weak form of the strain and the kinetic energies to extract the naturalfrequencies and the associated modeshapes. The nonlinear static equations of motion due to therotation and the thermal environment are treated employing the Newton-Raphson technique.Moreover, the natural frequencies are estimated from the linearized equations of motion aboutthe static configuration. After the validation of the present results, the rotation speed, thematerial length scale parameter, the temperature change, the power law exponent and theslenderness ratio impacts on the fundamental natural frequency and the first and the secondmodeshapes are examined. The outcomes indicate the increment of the natural frequency aftera threshold value of the power law exponent depends on a given rotation speed for the rotatingmicrobeams in comparison with the stationary microbeams. Furthermore, the modeshapes ofrotating functionally graded microbeams vary by the power law exponent while for stationaryfunctionally graded microbeams the modeshapes are invariant with respect to the power lawexponent even in the presence of the thermal environment.