Free Vibration and Blast Load Analysis of Porous Functionally Graded Plates

Functionally graded plates made-up of metal and ceramic constituents distributed across the thickness and length directions are now used in different applications like aircraft, biomedical, automotive engineering etc. due to their high thermal resistance and mechanical strength. In comparison with laminated composites, the problems of interlayer stresses, delamination and cracking are not seen, but there is a considerable effect of porosity on the overall dynamic behaviour. In the present work, aluminium-zirconia functionally graded porous rectangular plate subjected to central blast load is studied using finite element modeling. The simple power law is used to calculate volume fraction of ceramic constituent. The effects of aspect ratio, power law index and porosity factor on the first few natural frequencies are first studied and further, the dynamic response of the structure under impulse transient load simulating the blast conditions is obtained. To generalize the effects of numerous parameters on the frequency and amplitude of impulse response, radial basis function neural network is employed.