Modal analysis of laminated composite and sandwich plates using finite element method

Abstract

The present study deals with an investigation of free vibration analysis of laminated composite and sandwich plates. The finite element model is developed in ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL) tool using shell elements for composite plates and solid shell elements for sandwich plates. The influence of material, fiber orientation, aspect ratio and boundary conditions on modal behavior of isotropic, laminated composite and sandwich plates are explored. Graphite- Epoxy was considered for the analysis of composite plates and aluminum 2024-T3 was considered for isotropic plate simulations. Sandwich structure was modeled by considering aluminum core and Graphite-Epoxy as face sheets. Quasi- isotropic [0°/45°/-45°/90°]s, bending stiff [0°/0°/30°/-30°]s, and torsion stiff [45°/-45°/-45°/45°]s fiber orientations are considered for the analysis. Block Lanczos mode extraction method was adopted to obtain natural frequency values. The simulation results indicated that the cantilever boundary condition is most suited for the applications where the operating frequency range is low. © 2020 Author(s).