THREE-DIMENSIONAL FREE VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF ORTHOTROPIC THICK PLATES USING THE B-SPLINE SOLID ELEMENT METHOD

Abstract

This paper presents three-dimensional free vibration analysis of orthotropic thick plates with arbitrary boundary conditions using the B-spline solid element method based on the theory of orthotropic elasticity.
To demonstrate the convergence and accuracy of the present method, several examples are solved, and results are compared with those obtained by exact and other numerical methods based on the theory of elasticity and classical thin plate theory. Good convergence and accuracy are obtained by the present method regardless of plate geometries.
The effects of thickness to width ratio, aspect ratio and boundary conditions on dimensionless frequency parameters and mode shapes of orthotropic thick rectangular plates are investigated.