Thermal buckling analysis of cylindrical shells of carbon nanotubes reinforced composites

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the thermal buckling analysis of cylindrical shells of carbon nanotubes reinforced composites (CNTRC). In this study, a hybrid laminate composite plate consisting of N layers which are of thickness t is designed. N is the number of layers and the thickness of each functionally graded carbon nanotube reinforced composite (CNTR-FG) layer is h, and three types of the distribution  of carbon nanotubes (CNT) are considered for each layer. CNTR-FG are multi-layered plates which have the length "a", width "b", thickness "t", and an arbitrary combination of boundary conditions along the four edges of the layer. The distribution of carbon nanotubes along the thickness of each layer of CNTR-FG is considered to be given. Implementation is done by using Abaqus software. In the investigation of the thermal buckling of cylindrical shells of CNTRC, in three different types of distribution of carbon nanotubes, the behavior of buckling of a cylindrical shell is investigated. In each case, the amount of buckling generated in the shell is calculated and analyzed. The results show that the behaviors of these three types of distributions are close, and the nanotubes with uniform distribution against thermal buckling loads perform better than the other two distributions.