Numerical differential quadrature method for Reissner/Mindlin plates on two-parameter foundations

Approximate solutions for the bending of moderately thick rectangular plates on two-parameter elastic foundations (Pasternak-type) as described by Mindlin's theory are presented. The plates are subjected to an arbitrary combination of clamped and simply-supported boundary conditions. An efficient computational technique, the differential quadrature (DQ) method, is employed to transform the governing differential equations and boundary conditions into a set of linear algebraic equations for approximate solutions. These resulting algebraic equations are solved numerically. In this study, the accuracy of the DQ method is established by direct comparison with results in the existing literature. The convergence properties of the method are illustrated for different combinations of boundary conditions. The deflections, moments and shear forces at selected locations are tabulated in detail for different elastic foundations. The efficiency and simplicity of the solution method are highlighted.     

Analysis of annular Reissner/Mindlin plates using differential quadrature method

The axisymmetric flexure responses of moderately thick annular plates under static loading are investigated. The shear deformation is considered using the first-order Reissner/Mindlin plate theory and the solutions are obtained using the differential quadrature (DQ) method. In the solution process, the governing differential equations and boundary conditions for the problem are initially discretized by the DQ algorithm into a set of linear algebraic equations. The solutions of the problem are then determined by solving the set of algebraic equations. This study considers the plate subjected to various combinations of clamped, simply-supported, free and guided boundary conditions and different loading manners. The accuracy of the method is demonstrated through direct comparison of the present results with the corresponding exact solutions available in the literature.     

Exact vibration solution for initially stressed Mindlin plates on Pasternak foundations

Closed-form solutions for the vibration problem of initially stressed thick rectangular plates as described by Mindlin theory are presented. The plates are simply supported and resting on Pasternak foundations. The subset problem of buckling of Mindlin plates on Pasternak foundations is automatically solved by setting the frequency parameter to be equal to zero. The solution also applies to Winkler foundations where the shear modulus of the Pasternak model is taken to be zero. The closed-form solutions should be useful for checking the accuracy of numerical solutions.     

Vibration of rectangular Mindlin plates resting on non-homogenous elastic foundations

This paper is concerned with the vibration behaviour of rectangular Mindlin plates resting on non-homogenous elastic foundations. A rectangular plate is assumed to rest on a non-homogenous elastic foundation that consists of multi-segment Winkler-type elastic foundations. Two parallel edges of the plate are assumed to be simply supported and the two remaining edges may have any combinations of free, simply supported or clamped conditions. The plate is first divided into subdomains along the interfaces of the multi-segment foundations. The Levy solution approach associated with the state space technique is employed to derive the analytical solutions for each subdomain. The domain decomposition method is used to cater for the continuity and equilibrium conditions at the interfaces of the subdomains. First-known exact solutions for vibration of rectangular Mindlin plates on a non-homogenous elastic foundation are obtained. The vibration of square Mindlin plates partially resting on an elastic foundation is studied in detail. The influence of the foundation stiffness parameter, the foundation length ratio and the plate thickness ratio on the frequency parameters of square Mindlin plates is discussed. The exact vibration solutions presented in this paper may be used as benchmarks for researchers to check their numerical methods for such a plate vibration problem. The results are also important for engineers to design plates supported by multi-segment elastic foundations.     

Differential cubature method for analysis of shear deformable rectangular plates on Pasternak foundations

In this paper, the differential cubature method (DCM) was applied to the bending analysis of shear deformable plates resting on Pasternak foundation. An attractive advantage of the DCM is that it can produce the acceptable accuracy of numerical results with very few grid points in the solution domain and therefore can be very useful for rapid evaluation in engineering design. The detailed procedures for discretizing the governing equations and boundary conditions of the title problems using the DCM are presented. Numerical solutions for rectangular thick plates on Pasternak foundation and subjected to different boundary conditions are obtained. The convergence studies are carried out to establish the minimal grid points needed for achieving accurate solutions. Next, the solutions for some selected cases are presented and verified by comparing them with the published values. It is observed that the DCM is able to furnish convergent solution with relatively fewer grid points than the more established differential quadrature method (DQM).     

DSC-element method for free vibration analysis of rectangular Mindlin plates

A novel DSC-element method is proposed to investigate the free vibration of moderately thick plates based on the well-known Mindlin first-order shear deformation plate theory. The development of the present approach not only employs the concept of finite element method, but also implements the discrete singular convolution (DSC) delta type wavelet kernel for the transverse vibration analysis. This numerical algorithm is allowed dividing the domain of Mindlin plates into a number of small discrete rectangular elements. As compared with the global numerical techniques i.e. the DSC-Ritz method, the flexibility is increased to treat complex boundary constraints. For validation, a series of numerical experiments for different meshes of Mindlin plates with assorted combinations of edge supports, plate thickness and aspect ratios is carried out. The established natural frequencies are directly compared and discussed with those reported by using the finite element and other numerical and analytical methods from the open literature.     

Nonlinear bending of Reissner–Mindlin plates with free edges under transverse and in-plane loads and resting on elastic foundations

A nonlinear bending analysis is presented for a rectangular Reissner–Mindlin plate with free edges subjected to combined transverse partially distributed load and compressive edge loading and resting on a two-parameter (Pasternak-type) elastic foundation. The formulations are based on the Reissner–Mindlin plate theory considering the first-order shear deformation effect, and including the plate-foundation interaction. The analysis uses a mixed Galerkin-perturbation technique to determine the load–deflection curves and load–bending moment curves. Numerical examples are presented that relate to the performances of moderately thick rectangular plates with free edges subjected to combined loading and resting on Pasternak-type elastic foundations from which results for Winkler elastic foundations are obtained as a limiting case. The influence played by a number of effects, among them foundation stiffness, transverse shear deformation, loaded area, the plate aspect ratio and initial compressive load are studied. Typical results are presented in dimensionless graphical form.     

Bending of linearly tapered annular Mindlin plates

This paper presents exact axisymmetric bending solutions for linearly tapered, annular Mindlin plates with various boundary conditions for the inner and outer edges. The Mindlin plate theory has been adopted so as to incorporate the effect of transverse shear deformation which becomes significant in tapered and thick plates. The analytical solutions, hitherto not available, are useful as benchmark solutions for checking the validity, convergence and accuracy of numerical methods and software for tapered plate analysis.     

Three-dimensional static solutions of rectangular plates by variant differential quadrature method

An endeavor to exploit three-dimensional elasticity solutions for bending and buckling of rectangular plates via the differential quadrature (DQ) and harmonic differential quadrature (HDQ) methods is performed. Unlike other works, the priority of this paper is to examine the computational characteristics of the two methods; therefore, we focus our studies only on the simply supported and clamped rectangular plates. To start with, we first outline the basic equations and boundary conditions describing the bending and buckling of rectangular plates followed by normalizing and discretizing them according to the DQ and HDQ algorithms. The resulting algebraic equation systems are then solved to obtain the solutions. Based on these solutions, the computational characteristics of the DQ and HDQ methods are investigated in terms of their numerical performances. It is found that the DQ method displays obvious superior convergence characteristics over the HDQ method for the three-dimensional static analysis of rectangular plates.     

Free vibration of cantilevered arbitrary triangular Mindlin plates

This paper presents a free vibration analysis of thick cantilevered arbitrary triangular plates based on the Mindlin shear deformation theory. The solutions are computed using the recently developed pb-2 Rayleigh—Ritz method. The actual triangular plate is first mapped onto a basic square plate, and the deflections and rotations of the plate are approximated by Ritz functions defined as products of two-dimensional polynomials in the basic square plate domain and a basic function. The basic function satisfies the geometric boundary conditions at the outset and is chosen as the boundary expression of the cantilevered edge. Stiffness and mass matrices are integrated numerically over the domain of the basic square plate using Gaussian quadrature. Wherever possible, the present results are verified by comparison with existing analytical and experimental values from the open literature. To the authors' knowledge, first known results of natural frequencies for cantilevered arbitrary triangular Mindlin plates are presented for a wide range of geometries and thicknesses. These results are valuable to design engineers for checking their natural frequency calculations and may also serve as benchmark values for future numerical techniques and software packages for thick plate analysis. The influence of shear deformation and rotary inertia on the natural frequency parameters are examined.     

Vibration analysis of corrugated Reissner–Mindlin plates using a mesh-free Galerkin method

A mesh-free Galerkin method for the free vibration analysis of unstiffened and stiffened corrugated plates is introduced in this paper, in which the corrugated plates are simulated with an equivalent orthotropic plate model. To obtain the corresponding equivalent elastic properties for the model, a constant curvature state is applied to the corrugated sheet. The stiffened corrugated plates are treated as composite structures of equivalent orthotropic plates and beams, and the strain energies of the plates and beams are added up by the imposition of displacement compatible conditions between the plate and the beams. The stiffness matrix of the whole structure is then derived. The proposed method is superior to the finite element methods (FEMs) because no mesh is needed, and thus stiffeners (beams) do not need to be placed along the mesh lines and the necessity of remeshing when the positions of the stiffeners change is avoided. To demonstrate the accuracy and convergence of the proposed method, several numerical examples are analyzed both with the proposed method and the finite element commercial software ANSYS. Examples from other research are also employed. A good agreement between the results for the proposed method, the results of the ANSYS analysis, and the results from other research is observed. Both sinusoidally and trapezoidally corrugated plates are studied.     

The refined sinusoidal theory for FGM plates on elastic foundations

Using the refined sinusoidal shear deformation plate theory and including plate-foundation interaction, a thermoelastic bending analysis is presented for a simply supported, rectangular, functionally graded material plate subjected to a transverse uniform load and a temperature field, and resting on a two-parameter (Pasternak model) elastic foundation. The present shear deformation theory is simplified by enforcing traction-free boundary conditions at the plate faces. No transversal shear correction factors are needed because a correct representation of the transversal shearing strain is given. Material properties of the plate are assumed to be graded in the thickness direction according to a simple power-law distribution in terms of the volume fractions of the constituents. The equilibrium equations of the present plate are given based on various plate theories. A number of examples are solved to illustrate the numerical results concerning bending response of homogeneous and functionally graded rectangular plates resting on two-parameter elastic foundations from which results for Winkler elastic foundations are obtained as a limiting case. The influences played by transversal shear deformation, plate aspect ratio, side-to-thickness ratio, volume fraction distributions, and elastic foundation parameters are studied.     

Elastic large deflection analysis of isotropic rectangular Mindlin plates

Governing equations for the large deflection analysis of isotropic rectangular Mindlin plates are introduced and their solution using the DR algorithm is briefly outlined. Two computer programs, based respectively on interlacing and non-interlacing finite-differences, have been developed for the numerical solution of these equations. The programs have been verified by analysing a variety of thin and moderately thick plate problems for which alternative solutions are available. Sample results comparisons are presented in order to quantify the accuracy of the DR results. The non-interlacing finite-difference DR program is then used to compute new results for uniformly loaded square moderately thick plates with simply supported, clamped and combined simply supported and clamped edges.     

Elastic small deflection analysis of annular sector Mindlin plates

An analytical method is developed for the bending response of annular sector Mindlin plates with two radial edges simply supported, and exact solutions are presented in the form of Levy-type series. Several different boundary conditions on the two circular edges are considered, viz. simply supported-simply supported, clamped-clamped and free-free. Numerical results for the case of uniform loading are presented to indicate the effect of shear deformation on the deflections and stress resultants at various points in the plate. Twisting stress couple and transverse shear stress resultant distributions along and near the edges of the plate are illustrated graphically, and the principal differences between the results predicted by Mindlin's plate theory and classical thin plate theory are discussed in detail. Results obtained with the present exact analysis may serve as references for approximate solutions and, especially, as a ‘shear locking’ test for thick plate finite element analysis.     

Vibration of circular Mindlin plates with concentric elastic ring supports

This paper studies the vibration behaviour of circular Mindlin plates with multiple concentric elastic ring supports. Utilizing the domain decomposition technique, a circular plate is divided into several annular segments and one core circular segment at the locations of the elastic ring supports. The governing differential equations and the solutions of these equations are presented for the annular and circular segments based on the Mindlin-plate theory. A homogenous equation system that governs the vibration of circular Mindlin plates with elastic ring supports is derived by imposing the essential and natural boundary and segment interface conditions. The first-known exact vibration frequencies for circular Mindlin plates with multiple concentric elastic ring supports are obtained and the modal shapes of displacement fields and stress resultants for several selected cases are presented. The influence of the elastic ring support stiffness, locations, plate boundary conditions and plate thickness ratios on the vibration behaviour of circular plates is discussed.     

Postbuckling analysis of composite laminated plates on two-parameter elastic foundations

A postbuckling analysis is presented for a simply supported, composite laminated rectangular plate under uniaxial in-plane loading and resting on a two-parameter (Pasternak-type) elastic foundation. The analysis uses a perturbation technique to determine buckling loads and postbuckling equilibrium paths. The initial geometrical imperfection of the plate is taken into account. Numerical examples are presented that relate to the performances of perfect and imperfect, antisymmetric angle-ply and symmetric cross-ply laminated rectangular plates. Typical results are presented in dimensionless graphical form.     

Pseudospectral analysis of buckling and free vibration of rectangular Mindlin plates

A study of buckling and free vibration of rectangular Mindlin plates is presented. The analysis is based on the pseudospectral method, which uses basis functions that satisfy the boundary conditions. The equations of motion are collocated to yield a set of algebraic equations that are solved for the critical buckling load and for the natural frequencies in the presence of the in-plane loads. Numerical examples of rectangular plates with SS-C-SS-C boundary conditions are provided for various aspect ratios and thickness ratios, which show good agreement with those of the classical plate theory when the thickness ratio is very small. This paper was recommended for publication in revised form by Associate Editor Eung-Soo Shin Jinhee Lee received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Seoul National University and KAIST in 1982 and 1984, respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1992 and joined the Dept. of Mechanical and Design Engineering of Hongik University in Choongnam, Korea. His research interests include inverse problems, pseudospectral method, vibration and dynamic systems.     

Accurate buckling loads of thin rectangular plates under parabolic edge compressions by the differential quadrature method

The buckling of thin rectangular plates with nonlinearly distributed loadings along two opposite plate edges is analyzed by using the differential quadrature (DQ) method. The problem is considerably more complicated since it requires that first the plane elasticity problem be solved to obtain the distribution of in-plane stresses, and then the buckling problem be solved. Thus, very few analytical solutions (the only one available in the literature is for rectangular plates with all edges simply supported) have been available in the literature thus far. Detailed formulations and solution procedures are given herein. Nine combinations of boundary conditions and various aspect ratios are considered. Comparisons are made with a few existing analytical and/or finite element data. It has been found that a fast convergent rate can be achieved by the DQ method with non-uniform grids and very accurate results are obtained for the first time. It has also been found that the DQ results, verified by the finite element method with NASTRAN, are not quite close to the newly reported analytical solution. A possible reason is given to explain the difference.     

Effect of aspect ratio on large amplitude free vibrations of simply supported and clamped rectangular Mindlin plates using coupled displacement field method

We propose a novel method, known as Coupled displacement field (CDF) method, an alternative to study large amplitude free vibration behavior of moderately thick rectangular plates. An admissible trial function was assumed for one of the variables, say, the total rotations (in both X, Y directions). The function for lateral displacement field is derived in terms of the total rotations with the help of coupling equations, where the two independent variables become dependent on one another. This method makes use of the energy formulation, where it contains only half the number of undetermined coefficients when compared with conventional Rayleigh-Ritz method. The vibration problem is simplified significantly due to the reduction in number of undetermined coefficients. The frequency-amplitude relationship for the moderately thick rectangular plates with various aspect ratios for all edges simply supported and clamped boundary conditions was obtained. Closed form expressions for linear and nonlinear fundamental frequency parameters were derived.     

Topology optimum design of unimorph piezoelectric cantilevered Mindlin plates as a vibrating electric harvester

An FEM-based topology optimization approach is proposed to calculate the topologies of a substrate plate and a piezoelectric layer used for vibrating unimorph cantilevered plate-like electricity generators (energy harvesters). The Mindlin plate theory was combined with a topology optimization algorithm to consider the shear effect. Each optimum topology for a plate and a piezoelectric layer is computed and combined by reflecting the natural frequencies of the substrate plate, electromechanical couplings of piezoelectric materials, tip masses and method of moving asymptotes. The piezoelectric coefficients such as elasticity, piezoelectric coupling and capacitance are interpolated by element density variables. The cantilevered plate generators with optimal topologies were designed for three piezoelectric materials such as PZT, PMN-PT and PMN-PT single crystal fiber MFC, and their voltage outputs were compared using a developed FEM-based optimization code to investigate the suitable material for harvesters.