A THEORETICAL BASIS FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL REALIZATION OF BOUNDARY-CONDITIONS IN THE VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF PLATES

In the experimental analysis of beams and plates the realization of classical boundary conditions is one of the crucial prerequisites which governs the accuracy and reliability of the results obtained. The support structure used in the experimental set-up invariably has a small amount of flexibility when one wants it to be zero, and a large but finite flexibility when one wants it to be infinite. Hence one needs to evolve a criterion to be met by the design of the support structure to ensure that the edge conditions are simulated correctly. This paper is a study in this direction. A typical case of a rectangular plate with two opposite edges simply supported and uniform elastic restraint on the other two has been studied extensively. The numerical results presented clearly bring out the range of values and the interdependence of the translational and rotational flexibilities of the edge support for a good realization of classical boundary conditions. The application of the numerical results to a typical design of a simply supported edge is also presented. © 1993 Academic Press Limited.