Free Vibration Analysis of Laminated Composite Plates with General Boundary Elastic Supports Under Initial Thermal Load

Free vibration behavior was developed under the ratio of critical buckling temperature of laminated composite thin plates with the general elastic boundary condition. The equations of motion were found based on classical laminated plate theory (CLPT) while the solution functions consists of trigonometric function and a continuous function that is added to guarantee the sufficient smoother of the so-named remaining displacement function at the boundaries, in this research, a modified Fourier series were used, a generalized procedure solution was developed using Ritz method combined with the imaginary spring technique. The influences of many design parameters such as angles of layers, aspect ratio, thickness ratio, and ratio of initial in- plane thermal load in addition to different boundary conditions on the natural frequencies of laminated plate is analyzed. In general, the changes of fundamental natural frequency is inversely proportional with the ratio of thermal buckling load, also most parameters aspect ratio effect on the natural frequency about 35 – 40%. The present results were compared with those obtained by other researchers, and show good agreement.