Investigation of the vibrational characteristics of single-walled carbon nanotube/polymer nanocomposites using finite element method

Abstract

The vibrational behavior of polymer matrix reinforced by single-walled carbon nanotubes is investigated here. To this end, the finite element method is used. The effects of nanotube geometrical parameters and volume fraction on the natural frequency of the nanocomposites are explored. It is shown that the influence of the nanotube chirality on the vibrational behavior of the nanocomposite is not significant. However, increasing the diameter has an inverse effect on the natural frequency of the nanocomposites. Investigating the effect of volume fraction, it is shown that the nanocomposites with larger volume fractions possess larger frequencies. However, the influence of the volume fraction on the vibrational behavior of the nanocomposites diminishes for long single-walled carbon nanotubes. © 2019, The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.