Free vibration analysis of simply supported rectangular
plates
Ganesh Naik Guguloth1, Baij Nath Singh2, Vinayak Ranjan3
1, 3Bennett
University, Greater Noida, India
2IndianInstitute of Technology, Dhanbad, India
1Corresponding author
Received 23 October 2019; accepted 1 November 2019
DOI https://doi.org/10.21595/vp.2019.21135
Copyright © 2019 Ganesh Naik Guguloth, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract. In this paper, numerical analysis for free vibration of simply supported thin rectangular
plates has been simulated using Ansys. The vibration of plate follows Kirchhoff plate theory. The
natural frequency calculated using Ansys has been compared with Levy type solution results
available in the literature. It is observed that the natural frequencies of the simply supported
rectangular plate is in close agreement with exact solution results as reported in literature.
Keywords: Kirchhoff plate theory, Levy solution, simply supported rectangular plate.
1. Introduction
A thin plate is a solid structural body where the thickeness of the plate is small as compared to
other two dimensions.
In modern science explorations, rectangular thin plate structures are used in aerospace
industries, mechanical, automotive sectors, civil and marine industries etc. In the actual
engineering environment, there are many external forces which cause vibrations in the thin plate
structures. These forced vibrations are the cause of failure and damage to the engineering
structures. To investigate the dynamic response due to forced vibration of the plate structure,
natural frequencies and their mode shape estimations are very important. So, this paper is about
the analysis of free vibrations of rectangular thin plates in simply supported condition using finite
element with Ansys software.
Tanaka et al. [2] solved the free vibrations of elastic plates using integral equation process.
Karunasena and Kitipornchai et al. [3] determined the free vibration analysis of deformable
triangular element. Wu and Liu et al. [4] have been studied the new numerical solution technique
called as differential cubature method for free vibration analysis of arbitrary shaped plates. Moon
and Choi et al. [5] have formulated the transfer dynamic stiffness coefficient method for vibration
analysis of frame structures. Myung [6] has developed the finite element transfer stiffness
coefficient method for free vibration analysis of plate structures. The approach is based on the
combination of the modelling techniques in FEM and the transfer technique of the stiffness
coefficient in the transfer stiffness coefficient method. Kumar et al. [7] use dynamic stiffness
method to extract natural frequency and mode shapes of thin plate. Piyush et al. [8] used
Rayleigh-Ritz method to compute the natural frequencies of thin plate.
2. Methodology
The Kirchhoff plate theory is a two dimensional mathematical model that is used to determine
the stresses and deformation in thin plates when they are subjected to force and moments.
The assumptions made in Kirchhoff plate theory are:
1) Straight lines normal to the mid surface remains straight after deformation.
2) The thickness of the plate does not change during a deformation.
3) Straight lines normal to the mid surface remain normal to the mid surface after deformation.
This theory is used to model the transverse vibration of the plate. According to Kirchhoff plate
270 VIBROENGINEERING PROCEDIA. NOVEMBER 2019, VOLUME 29
FREE VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF SIMPLY SUPPORTED RECTANGULAR PLATES.
GANESH NAIK GUGULOTH, BAIJ NATH SINGH, VINAYAK RANJAN
theory, the equations for the transverse vibration of plate is given by:
𝜕 𝜔 𝜕 𝜔 𝜕 𝜔
𝐷 +2 + = 0, (1)
𝜕𝑥 𝜕𝑥 𝜕𝑦 𝜕𝑦
where 𝐷 is flexural rigidity:
𝐸ℎ
𝐷= . (2)
12 1 − 𝜗
The finite element method is used to calculate the natural frequency. The general equation of
finite element for the transverse deflection of thin plate is given by:
𝑀 𝑞 + 𝐾 𝑞 = 0, (3)
where [𝑀] is the mass matrix, [𝐾] is stiffness matrix, 𝑞 is the nodal acceleration vector and 𝑞
is nodal displacement vector.
The analytical calculation of natural frequencies are also carried out using Eq. (4):
𝐷 𝑚𝜋 𝑛𝜋
𝜔 = + , (4)
𝜌ℎ 𝑎 𝑏
where 𝜔 – natural frequencies, 𝜌 – density, 𝑎, 𝑏 – length and width of rectangular plate, ℎ –
thickness of plate.
The material properties and dimensions that are considered for the analysis of simply
supported rectangular plate are referred from Ramu et al. [1].
The material properties of rectangular plate are:
Material = Aluminium;
Young’s modulus 𝐸 = 70×109 N/m2;
Density 𝜌 = 2700 kg/m3;
Poisons ratio 𝜗 = 0.3.
The dimensions of plate taken are:
Length of plate 𝑎 = 600 mm;
Width of plate 𝑏 = 400 mm;
Thickness ℎ = 6.25 mm, 12.5 mm, 25 mm, 50 mm.
𝑎
ℎ
Fig. 1. Dimensions of the rectangular plate
Finite element analysis formulation for rectangular element have four nodes. There are three
degrees of freedom at each node, one is along the thickness of the plate and the other two are
rotations along 𝑋 and 𝑌 directions. The solid rectangular plate is modelled in Ansys software and
the size of the mesh is 1.e-002 m. The number of elements taken are 2400 and the number of nodes
are 5002. The face meshing of the rectangular plate gives the solutions which are close agreement
to the theoretical values.
The geometry of plate 600 mm×400 mm with varying thickness.
ISSN PRINT 2345-0533, ISSN ONLINE 2538-8479, KAUNAS, LITHUANIA 271
FREE VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF SIMPLY SUPPORTED RECTANGULAR PLATES.
GANESH NAIK GUGULOTH, BAIJ NATH SINGH, VINAYAK RANJAN
Fig. 2. Finite element model of plate
3. Results and discussion
In this section, the first six natural frequencies and mode shapes of simply supported
rectangular plates are estimated using Finite Element Method. The present natural frequencies
results are compared with those available in literature and with exact solutions.
Tables 1-4 shows that the first six natural frequencies of thin rectangular plate. These results
are nearly same as Ramu [1] and analytical solutions under different thickness of the plate.
a) 1st mode shape b) 2nd mode shape c) 3rd mode shape
d) 4th mode shape e) 5th mode shape f) 6th mode shape
Fig. 3. First six mode shapes of simply supported rectangular plate
Table 1. Comparison of the natural frequency parameter with analytical solution and Ramu [1]
for simply supported rectangular plate with the thickeness of 6.25 mm
Mode number
Results
1 2 3 4 5 6
Analytical 136.56 262.75 420.41 472.96 546.53 756.73
Ramu [1] 135.8 259.9 417.6 466.8 535.9 733.7
Present (FEA) 136.92 263.27 422.27 474.53 547.86 758.07
Table 2. Comparison of the natural frequency parameter with analytical solution and Ramu [1]
for simply supported rectangular plate with the thickness of 12.5 mm
Mode number
Results
1 2 3 4 5 6
Analytical 273.12 525.51 840.82 945.92 1093.06 1513.477
Ramu [1] 271.7 519.8 835.2 933.7 1071.9 1467.5
Present (FEA) 272.17 522.27 833.59 940.3 1083.3 1493.7
Table 3. Comparison of the natural frequency parameter with analytical solution and Ramu [1]
for simply supported rectangular plate with the thickness of 25 mm
Mode number
Results
1 2 3 4 5 6
Analytical 546.25 1051.02 1681.64 1891.84 2186.13 3026.95
Ramu [1] 543.5 1039.7 1670.5 1867.5 2143.7 2935.1
Present (FEA) 535.26 1019.8 1634.9 1823.1 2088.3 2847.7
272 VIBROENGINEERING PROCEDIA. NOVEMBER 2019, VOLUME 29
FREE VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF SIMPLY SUPPORTED RECTANGULAR PLATES.
GANESH NAIK GUGULOTH, BAIJ NATH SINGH, VINAYAK RANJAN
Table 4. Comparison of the natural frequency parameter with analytical solution and Ramu [1]
for simply supported rectangular plate with the thickness of 50 mm
Mode number
Results
1 2 3 4 5 6
Analytical 1092.51 2102.05 3363.28 3783.69 4372.26 6053.91
Ramu [1] 1087 2079.4 3341 3735 4278.4 5870.2
Present (FEA) 1024 1906.8 3008.8 3100.6 3316 3748.1
4. Conclusions
In this paper, numerical analysis for free vibration analysis of thin rectangular solid plate is
carried out using Finite Element Method under simply supported condition with varying the
thickness. It is found that those natural frequency results are quite close to the reported literatures.
As the thickness of the rectangular plate increases, the values are not so close to the analytical
values.
References
[1] Ramu I., Mohanty S. C. Study on free vibration analysis of rectangular plate structures using finite
element method. Procedia Engineering, Vol. 38, 2012, p. 2758-2766.
[2] Tanaka M., Yamagiwa K., Miyazaki K., Ueda T. Free vibration analysis of elastic plate structures
by boundary element method. Engineering Analysis, Vol. 5, Issue 4, 1988, p. 182-188.
[3] Karunasena W., Kitipornchai S. Free vibrations of shear deformable general triangular plates.
Journal of Sound and Vibration, Vol. 199, Issue 5, 1997, p. 595613.
[4] Wu L., Liu J. Free vibration analysis of arbitrary shaped thick plates by differential cubature method.
International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, Vol. 47, 2005, p. 6381.
[5] Moon D. H., Choi M. S. Vibration analysis for frame structures using transfer of dynamic stiffness
coefficient. Journal of Sound and Vibration, Vol. 234, Issue 5, 2000, p. 725736.
[6] Myung Soo Choi Free vibration analysis of plate structures using finite element-transfer stiffness
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[7] Kumar S., Vinayak Ranjan, Jana P. Free vibration analysis of thin functionally graded rectangular
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[8] Pratap Singh P., Azam M. S., Ranjan Vinayak Vibration analysis of a thin functionally graded plate
having an out of plane material inhomogeneity resting on Winkler-Pasternak foundation under
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