Free transverse vibration of shear deformable super-elliptical plates

Free transverse vibration of shear deformable super-elliptical plates with uniform thickness was studied based on Mindlin plate theory using finite element method. Quadrilateral isoparametric elements were used in the paper. Sensitivity analysis was made to determine the influence of the thickness, the aspect ratio, and the shape of the plate on the natural frequency. Accuracy of the results computed in the current study was validated by comparing them with the solutions available in the literature. The results reveal that the frequencies of clamped super-elliptical plates lie in the range bounded by elliptical and rectangular plates irrespective of the aspect ratio, and furthermore, the frequency decreases if the super-elliptical power increases. A similar trend was observed for simply supported plates with high aspect ratio. The free vibration response for the first and the second symmetric-antisymmetric (SA) modes were found to be different for high aspect ratio. The results reveal that using insufficient number of degrees of freedom results in finding a totally different relation between the super-elliptical power and the frequency.