Finite element dynamic analysis of submerged laminated composite plates

The influence of the fluid medium in modifying the dynamic characteristics of composite plates considering fluid-structure coupling effect is discussed in this paper. The complete plate-fluid system is discretised as an assemblage of finite elements assuming fluid pressure and generalised displacements as the nodal unknowns for the fluid and structural domain, respectively. The resulting coupled equations of motions for these two domains in the absence of any viscous damping are then integrated using Newmark's algorithm. Transient analysis of both submerged isotropic and composite plates are carried out to study the effect of submergence on the dynamic characteristics namely, natural frequencies as well as amplitudes and period of response.