Buckling analysis of quadrilateral laminated plates with carbon nanotubes reinforced composite layers

• Investigating the buckling behavior of the quadrilateral laminated plates based on the FSDT.
• Laminated plates with carbon nanotube reinforced composite layers are analyzed.
• Differential quadrature method is used to analyze plates with arbitrary boundary conditions.
• The effect of the carbon nanotubes distribution through the layer thickness is studied.
• The effects of geometrical shape parameters and thickness-to-length ratio are studied.

The buckling behavior of quadrilateral laminated thin-to-moderately thick plates composed of perfectly bonded carbon nanotube reinforced composite (CNTRC) layers is studied. The stability equations are derived using the adjacent equilibrium (Trefftz) buckling criterion and based on the first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) of plates. Four different profiles of the single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) distribution through the thickness of layers are considered, which include their uniform distribution (UD), functionally graded (FG) symmetric and asymmetric distributions. The stability equations subjected to arbitrary boundary conditions are discretized by employing a mapping-differential quadrature technique. The formulation and method of solution are validated by showing their fast rate of convergence and performing comparison studies with the available results in the open literature wherever possible. In addition, analytical solution for the simply supported symmetric laminated rectangular plate with CNTRC layers is derived and excellent agreement of the numerical results with the analytical solution is exhibited. Then, the effects of volume fraction of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), geometrical shape parameters, thickness-to-length ratio, different kinds of CNTs distribution along the layers thickness and boundary conditions on the critical buckling load of the quadrilateral laminated plates are investigated.