Study of the mechanical behaviour of porous composites reinforced with graphene under combined loads

Abstract

Functionally graded material (FGM) composites represent an exciting and active field of research in mechanical and aerospace engineering. These materials are characterized by a graded variation of certain material properties, which occurs generally between metal and ceramic. In parallel, nanomaterials are also catching the interest of researchers due to their extraordinary physical properties, particularly in structural reinforcing. We study in this thesis the use of graphene platelets (Gpls) nanomaterial to reinforce porous metal-ceramic FGMs, which is a case of study that has not been previously reported in the literature. We utilize a three-steps modelling procedure to represent the material properties of this multiparametric FGM, and a hyperbolic higher-order plate theory to represent transverse shear effects. The general equations of equilibrium were derived by hand using Hamilton’s principle, and were solved analytically for simplysupported plates. After method validation of the developed Python codes, we carried out various parametric examples to study the influence of the base FGM composition, GPls, porosity, and plate’s dimensions on the mechanical behaviour of rectangular FGM plates (including the free vibration, static bending, and buckling). The obtained results can serve as a guideline for future research on porous GPls-reinforced metal-ceramic FGMs.