Free vibration of cantilevered symmetrically laminated thick trapezoidal plates

To account for the effect of transverse shear deformation, the p-Ritz method incorporating Reddy's third-order shear deformation theory has been developed for the vibration analysis of cantilevered, thick, laminated, trapezoidal plates. In the p-Ritz method, a set of uniquely defined polynomial functions, consisting of the product of a two-dimensional function and a basic function, are used as the admissible trial displacement and rotation functions in the Ritz minimization procedure. The energy integral is formulated based on Reddy's third-order shear deformation theory. From the p-Ritz method, the governing eigenvalue equation is derived which is used to compute the vibration frequency parameters and mode shapes of the laminated plate. Convergence and comparison studies have been presented to demonstrate and verify the accuracy of the results. © 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.