Vibration analysis of heterogeneous nonlocal beams in thermal environment

In this paper, the thermo-mechanical vibration characteristics of functionally graded (FG) nanobeams subjected to three types of thermal loading including uniform, linear and non-linear temperature change are investigated in the framework of third-order shear deformation beam theory which captures both the microstructural and shear deformation effects without the need for any shear correction factors. Material properties of FG nanobeam are assumed to be temperature-dependent and vary gradually along the thickness according to the power-law form. Hence, applying a third-order shear deformation beam theory (TSDBT) with more rigorous kinetics of displacements to anticipate the behaviors of FG nanobeams is more appropriate than using other theories. The small scale effect is taken into consideration based on nonlocal elasticity theory of Eringen. The nonlocal equations of motion are derived through Hamilton's principle and they are solved applying analytical solution. The obtained results are compared with those predicted by the nonlocal Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and nonlocal Timoshenko beam theory and it is revealed that the proposed modeling can accurately predict the vibration responses of FG nanobeams. The obtained results are presented for the thermo-mechanical vibration analysis of the FG nanobeams such as the effects of material graduation, nonlocal parameter, mode number, slenderness ratio and thermal loading in detail. The present study is associated to aerospace, mechanical and nuclear engineering structures which are under thermal loads.