Reduced basis technique for evaluating the sensitivity of the nonlinear vibrational response of composite plates

A reduced basis technique and a computational procedure are presented for generating the nonlinear vibrational response, and evaluating the first-order sensitivity coefficients of composite plates (derivatives of the nonlinear frequency with respect to material and geometric parameters of the plate). The analytical formulation is based on a form of the geometrically nonlinear shallow shell theory with the effects of transverse shear deformation, rotatory inertia and anisotropic material behavior included. The plate is discretized by using mixed finite element models with the fundamental unknowns consisting of both the nodal displacements and the stress-resultant parameters of the plate. The computational procedure can be conveniently divided into three distinct steps. The first step involves the generation of various-order perturbation vectors, and their derivatives with respect to the material and lamination parameters of the plate, using Linstedt-Poincaré perturbation technique. The second step consists of using the perturbation vectors as basis vectors, computing the amplitudes of these vectors and the nonlinear frequency of vibration, via a direct variational procedure. The third step consists of using the perturbation vectors, and their derivatives, as basis vectors and computing the sensitivity coefficients of the nonlinear frequency via a second application of the direct variational procedure. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is demonstrated by means of numerical examples of composite plates.