VIBRATION OF MINDLIN PLATES ON POINT SUPPORTS USING CONSTRAINT FUNCTIONS

This paper presents the first known solutions for free flexural vibrat ion of Mindlin plates of arbitrary shape with internal point supports. A new approach for modeling the point supports in vibration analysis is proposed. The method is based on the use of a set of pb-2 shape fun ctions to account for prescribed boundary conditions of different shap es. Internal point supports are imposed as geometric constraints in th e final formulation of the governing eigenvalue equation. The proposed method is employed to determine the vibration frequencies of square a nd circular plates having an arbitrary number of internal point suppor ts. Comparisons with known thin-plate solutions are carried out, where possible. to verify the accuracy of the proposed method.