Finite-Element Analysis of Vibration and Flutter of Cantilever Anisotropic Plates

Abstract

The hybrid stress finite element method is used to study the effects of filament angle, θ, and orthotropicity parameter, EL/ET, on the vibration and flutter characteristics of cantilevered anisotropic plates. The results indicate a generally strong lack of monotonic dependence on θ. Also, the natural frequency in certain cases involving the first few modes, can become relatively insensitive to both θ and EL/ET for a range of θ beyond 70 deg. Values of critical dynamic pressure are obtained by a modal approach, in which the mode shapes are obtained by the hybrid stress method. Convergence of the modal method is rather rapid for the configurations analyzed, and a comparison of the method with an exact solution for the case of an isotropic simply supported plate shows that use of six modes gives excellent agreement.