Dynamic characteristics of laminated composite sandwich plates with graphene-reinforced magnetorheological elastomer

This research examines the dynamic characteristics of laminated composite sandwich plates with magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) and graphene-reinforced MRE (hybrid-MRE) cores. The laminated composite was fabricated with unidirectional glass fiber with [0°/90°]s ply orientation, epoxy resin (LY556), and hardener (HY951) using a vacuum bagging-assisted hand-layup technique. The experiment was performed to determine the natural frequencies of the sandwich plates under clamped-clamped (CC) boundary conditions with various magnetic fields. The laminated composite sandwich plate with MRE and graphene-reinforced MRE was developed by using Abaqus, and the results are validated with experimental results and existing literature. Further, the MRE and graphene-reinforced MRE sandwich plates parametric study evaluates the impact of the applied magnetic field, ply orientation, different boundary conditions, aspect ratio, and core-skin layer thickness ratio. Under clamped-free (CF) boundary conditions, The MRE and hybrid-MRE sandwich plate natural frequencies exhibit an increase of 14.64% and 16.27%, respectively, as the applied magnetic field increased from 0 G to 750 G. The MRE and hybrid-MRE sandwich plates demonstrate their highest natural frequencies under CC conditions and [0°]4 ply orientation, in contrast to other boundary conditions and ply orientations. The sandwich plate’s natural frequencies decrease with an increase in both the core-skin thickness ratio and aspect ratio. This research will guide design engineers in replacing pure MRE with hybrid MRE in certain aerospace applications.