THE SUPERPOSITION-GALERKIN METHOD FOR FREE-VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF RECTANGULAR-PLATES

It is known that exploitation of the traditional superposition method for analyzing plate free vibration problems becomes a very demanding a nd difficult task when one moves from thin isotropic plate theory to t he thick plate Mindlin theory, and to the analysis of laminated plates . Difficulties arise because of the vast families of roots encountered , real and complex, when solving associated differential equations. Th e presence of hyperbolic functions tends to produce computer over-flow and under-flow and computational difficulties. In this paper, the mod ified Superposition-Galerkin method is introduced. All of the above pr oblems are eliminated and excellent agreement is encountered when resu lts obtained by both methods are compared. (C) 1996 Academic Press Lim ited