An Analytical Study of Buckling Behavior of Nanocomposite Beams

The structural members like beams are often subjected a mode of sudden failure due to high compressive load which is characterised as buckling. The buckling behaviour is one of the most important parameters needs to be considered while designing the structural members like beams. The polymer composites are the one of the most emerging materials used in air craft structural applications. This paper studies the buckling behaviour of Carbon Nanotube (CNT) reinforced polymer composite beams by using Classical Laminate Plate Theory (CLPT) approach. The elastic constants obtained for the CNT reinforced polymer composite by applying Mori-Tanaka method are further used to analyse the effect of stacking sequence, CNT Volume fraction in the composite, and CNT radii on the critical buckling loads of an eight layered nanocomposite beam. The Numerical results are also presented and compared for various boundary conditions of beams like clamped-clamped and hinged-hinged. The main intention behind this study is to find the suitability of the nanocomposites as structural components like air-craft wings and ducts.