Vibration analysis of discontinuous Mindlin plates by differential quadrature element method

A new numerical technique, the differential quadrature element method (DQEM ), has been developed for solving the free vibration of the discontinuous M indlin plate in this paper. By the DQEM, the complex plate domain is decomp osed into small simple continuous subdomains (elements) and the differentia l quadrature method (DQM) is applied to each continuous subdomain to solve the problems. The detailed formulations for the DQEM and the connection con ditions between each element are presented. Several numerical examples are analyzed to demonstrate the accuracy and applicability of this new method t o the free vibration analysis of the Mindlin plate with various discontinui ties which are not solvable directly using the differential quadrature meth od.