Free vibration analysis of functionally graded sandwich flat panel

In this paper, the free vibration behavior of functionally graded ceramic-metal sandwich flat panels is investigated. The sandwich panels are considered to be composed of metal rich face layers with varying composition and a homogenous isotropic ceramic core layer. The kinematics of the panels is modeled using ANSYS commercial package. The convergence and the validity of the present model have been established by comparing the present results with the benchmark results available in published literature. Subsequently, the influence of power index, symmetry type and the support conditions on the non-dimensional fundamental frequency is investigated. The fundamental frequency is found to decrease with increasing power index value and increase with number of constraints at the support. The stiffness of the panels is affected by core thickness and the panels with higher core-to-face thickness ratio are observed to have lower fundamental frequency. (paper)