Free vibration response of P-FGM and S-FGM sandwich shell panels: A comparison

Abstract This research work presents the comparison of free vibration response for functionally graded materials (FGM) sandwich shell panels having bottom and top layers made of pure metal and ceramic and the core of the same is made of FGM. The material properties of the FGM core are varied according to the power-law model (P-FGM) and the sigmoid model (S-FGM). A finite element model (FEM) based on the displacement field according to first-order shear deformation theory for each layer has been used to develop the governing differential equation for free vibration analysis of P-FGM sandwich and S-FGM sandwich shell panels. The accuracy of the present finite element model has been demonstrated by comparing results with benchmark examples from with those published in literature. Next, the free vibration responses obtained from two different material modeling Viz., power-law variation and Sigmoid variation for FGM core of FGM sandwich shell have been compared by varying parameters like volume fraction index, curvature, and geometrical boundary conditions.