FREE-VIBRATION ANALYSES OF GENERALLY LAMINATED TAPERED SKEW PLATES

An efficient method is developed for the free vibration analyses of generally laminated composite skew plates having arbitrary edge conditions, such as clamped, simply supported or free. The procedure consists of the Rayleigh-Ritz method utilizing a strain energy functional containing both bending and stretching effects and accommodating arbitrary ply stacking sequences. A set of Chebyshev polynomials is used as trial functions to represent the three components of the displacement at a given point. The geometric boundary conditions are satisfied by providing appropriate springs with large stiffnesses at a given edge. Results are obtained for isotropic, specially orthotropic, symmetrically laminated and unsymmetrically laminated plates. Both rectangular and skewed tapered plates are analyzed. The capability to perform the static analysis of a composite plate is also demonstrated. To establish the correctness and effectiveness of the method, whenever possible, the numerical results are compared with those obtained by other researchers.