Transverse vibration analysis of composite plates with multiple distributed composite patches

Abstract

Transverse vibration of rectangular composite plates with multiple distributed composite patches is analyzed in this paper. Because of the geometric discrepancy between the plate and patch, analytical solutions are usually hard to achieve. The present model is formulated by using the Rayleigh–Ritz method and adopting various types of modal shape functions of uniform beam as admissible functions for different boundary conditions. The total system energies are calculated by adding the energies of the substrate plate and the energies of the patches. By imposing the displacement-matching condition at the patch domains, the coordinate systems of the substrate plate and patches are coupled. By means of the present method, it is very convenient and efficient to build the system governing equations and solve the eigenvalue problem. For the composite patches, they are also assumed to be symmetrically layered and have the same layer stacking sequence with the substrate laminate. The effects of layer stacking sequence, modulus ratio, aspect ratio, and boundary conditions on the natural frequencies are investigated and discussed. The results are also compared with the existed benchmark solutions and FEM solutions for validation. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach is computationally very efficient and accurate and can be used as a tool to solve transverse vibration problems of composite plate with multiple composite patches.