The influence of boundary conditions and transverse shear on the vibrationof angle-ply laminated plates, circular cylinders and cylindrical panels

This paper investigates the influence of the edge boundary conditions on th e vibration characteristics of transverse shear deformable composite plates , closed cylindrical shells and open cylindrical panels having an arbitrary angle-ply lay-up. The shell model employed for this purpose is equivalent to the unified shear deformable Love-type theory introduced in Refs. [6,7], whereas the analysis is based on the Ritz method. Following some recent re levant developments [1-5], in which the method was applied successfully in connection with vibration problems of shear deformable cross-ply laminates, the Ritz method is employed in conjunction with complete functional bases formed by appropriate orthonormal polynomials. The present vibration study is based on angle-ply laminates having different combinations of simply sup ported, clamped and free edge boundaries. Apart from the convergence tests performed and the new results presented, the success of the present analysi s is verified through comparisons with the corresponding results based on c lassical plate and shell theories as well as through comparisons with corre sponding numerical and experimental results that are available in the liter ature. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.