Experimental and analytical investigation on forced and free vibration of sandwich structures with reinforced composite faces in an acidic environment

The main objective of this study is to investigate the impact of nanoparticles as reinforcement material on the vibrational behavior of sandwich structures in an acidic medium. The glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) faces were fabricated with and without the addition of 3 wt% nanoclay and nanosilica to determine the mechanical behaviors of the GFRP faces in the presence of an acidic medium. The obtained results showed adding 3 wt% of nanoclay caused better durability and less mass variation of composite specimens in sulfuric acid. The “Coefficient of acidic immersion expansion” (βacid) is determined by measuring the length and mass variation of GFRP specimens in the immersion, and applied to low order piecewise shear deformation theory (LOPSDT) for the first time; Also the frequency results of LOPSDT have been shown good agreement in validation with the ANSYS numerical solution. It is shown that acidic environment reduces the frequency of the first mode of sandwich plates with reinforced face by 3 wt% nanosilica, and nanoclay has increased by 6.81 % and 4.66 %, respectively. This study indicates after one month of immersion, the natural frequency of the sandwich with pure, and 3 wt% nanoclay reduces about 1 %, and the natural frequency of the sandwich with the faces reinforced with 3 wt% nanosilica reduces by more than 3 %; Moreover, the frequency of forced vibrations, caused by acidic immersion expansion, was improved significantly by 10.04 % and 6.54 % in the first mode by incorporating 3 wt% of nanoclay, and nanosilica into the faces of the sandwich in one month of immersion compared to the sandwich with pure faces.