VIBRATION OF TRIANGULAR MINDLIN PLATES SUBJECT TO ISOTROPIC INPLANE STRESSES

The influence of isotropic in-plane stresses on the fundamental vibration frequencies of thick triangular plates is investigated. Some critical buckling factors are also presented in the paper. Due to the lack of results and importance of this topic, the Rayleigh-Ritz method is applied to solve the governing eigenvalue function based on the Mindlin plate theory. The fundamental frequency parameters for triangular Mindlin plates subject to uniform tensile and compressive stresses with different combinations of free, simply supported, and clamped boundary conditions are determined. The solutions are presented in the form of design charts where the fundamental frequency parameters can easily be read for particular thickness to width ratios (t/b) and in-plane stresses. Since no other vibration solution for thick triangular plate is available, the thin triangular plate solutions obtained by setting the thickness to width ratio to be very small (say t/b = 0.001), where possible, are verified with known solutions from the open literature.