Thin plate vibration and stability analysis of a refined quadrilateral plate element

In this paper, a refined nonconforming quadrilateral thin plate element RPQ4 is used to analyze the vibration and stability problems of thin plates. For vibration analysis, a modified mass matrix is formulated and in the same way, a modified geometric stiffness matrix is formed to calculate the critical load in the stability analysis of thin plates. The numerical results have demonstrated that the modified mass matrix and modified geometric stiffness matrix are efficient in improving the accuracy of natural frequency in the free vibration analysis and critical load of buckling in the analysis of stability of thin plates.