The Galerkin element method applied to the vibration of damped sandwich beams

The Galerkin or Rayleigh-Ritz method is frequently used in engineering to estimate the static and dynamic behavior of simple structures with quite good accuracy and convergence. In this paper, a new finite element for damped sandwich beam structures is presented, which combines the polynomial shape functions of conventional finite element analysis with Galerkin orthogonal functions. Displacement consistency over the interfaces between the damping layer and the elastic layers is taken into consideration to ensure a conforming element and guarantee good accuracy. Orthogonal beam functions are selected for fast convergence, especially for the prediction of higher order vibration modes using very few elements. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.