Elastic guided waves in fully-clamped functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite plates

This paper is to study the size-dependent characteristics of elastic guided waves in a Functionally Graded Carbon Nanotube-Reinforced Composite (FG-CNTRC) plate with fully clamped ends. The material properties of FG-CNTRC plate vary along the thickness direction via three different distributions of carbon nanotubes. First-order shear deformation plate theory in the framework of Eringen nonlocal differential model is applied to investigate the FG-CNTRC plate. An analytical solution is used to solve the equations of wave motion. Some numerical examples about dispersion curves are given, and the influences of distributions of carbon nanotubes, geometry conditions, the volume fraction of carbon nanotubes, and nonlocal size-dependency on the dispersion are analyzed. In addition, the size-dependent characteristics of elastic guided waves, which has not been mentioned in the previous studies of the FG-CNRC plate, are found with the dispersion curves. (paper)