Vibration analysis of simply supported plates of general shape with internal point and line supports using the Galerkin method

A numerical technique is developed for the dynamic analysis of arbitrary qu adrilateral-shaped plates with internal supports. The procedure uses the Ga lerkin method in conjunction with natural coordinates in order to represent general plates. The method is programmed, and several numerical examples a re presented to illustrate the accuracy and validity of the method. Natural Frequencies of trapezoidal, rhombic, skew, rectangular and square plates w ith intermediate line supports are obtained, and the results, where possibl e, are compared with established solutions presented in the literature. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.