A new rectangular plate element for vibration analysis of laminated composites

In this paper, a higher order rectangular plate bending element based on a Higher Order Shear Deformation Theory (HSDT) is developed. The element has 4 nodes and 20 degrees of freedom. The transverse displacement is interpolated by using an optimized interpolation function while the additional rotation degrees of freedom are approximated by linear Lagrange interpolation. The consistent element mass matrix is used. A damped element is introduced to the finite element model. The proposed FEM is used to calculate eigenfrequencies and modal damping of composite plates with various boundary conditions and different thicknesses. The results show that the present FEM gives excellent results when compared to other methods and experiment results, and is efficient and reliable for both thick and thin plates. The proposed finite element model does not lock in the thin plate situation and does not contain any spurious vibration mode, and converges rapidly. It will provide a good basis for the inverse analysis of vibration of a structure.