Effect of trapezoidal shaped laminated composite plate with and without cutout on vibration characteristics

Abstract In the present investigation, the influence of centrally placed circular cutouts, ply-orientation and boundary conditions on the vibration characteristics of laminated trapezoidal composite panels has been studied by using finite element technique. Towards this investigation, an eight node iso-parametric plate element has been used to discrete the laminated composite panel with seven degrees of freedom at each node. In the present mathematical formulation, the effect of shear deformation has been incorporated by using higher order shear deformation theory. Therefore, the present model is holds good for both thin and thick panels without applying any shear correction factors. The accuracy of the present model is confirmed by comparing present results with approachable literature. The parametric studies are carried out to examine the effect of various parameters such as different edge conditions, trapezoidal shape ratio, cutout ratio and aspect ratio of the trapezoidal laminated panel. It is observed from this study that the variation in natural frequency of the panel under different ply- orientations and boundary condition is predominant as compared to that of thick plate configuration.