Purpose <p>The present research explores the vibration characteristics of circular sandwich plates with electro-rheological (ER) core and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) reinforced face sheets. The material attributes of the ER core are considered according to the Yalcintas and Don models. Nanocomposite layers include a Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) matrix, and their CNTs are functionally graded (FG) or distributed uniformly along the plate thickness. The extended mixture rule (EMR) approach is applied to acquire the material properties of nanocomposite face sheets. First-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) is exploited, and the extended Hamilton’s principle is adopted to extract the motion equations. The impacts of diverse parameters, including the core-to-face sheets thickness ratio, different CNT distributions in face sheets, external electric field intensity, and volume fractions of CNTs on vibration features of circular sandwich plates, are inspected.</p> Methods <p>The differential quadrature method (DQM) approximates the modal loss factor (MLF) and vibration frequency of ER sandwich plates for diverse edge conditions. The presented findings are validated by comparing them with the published results in the technical literature.</p> Results <p>The findings illustrated that the ER sandwich plates exhibit a higher natural frequency as the volume fraction of CNTs in face sheets is enhanced. Additionally, the vibrational characteristics of ER sandwich plates can be controlled by fine-adjusting the external electric field intensity.</p> Conclusion <p>The insights gained from this research can be effectively employed in designing and developing intelligent sandwich structures with enhanced control capabilities.</p>