Dynamic Response Analysis of Ribbed Plate Resting on Viscoelastic Pasternak Foundation via MLS Meshless Method

Ribbed plates are widely applied in the structures of subgrade and pavement in order to adapt to the increasingly complex moving loads and improve the bearing capacity of subgrade and pavement. The meshless methods are more flexible than the methods based on elements for some dynamic analysis of ribbed plate, such as free vibration, forced vibration and other fields. Based on the first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) and moving least-squares approximation (MLS), a meshless method for the dynamic response analysis of stiffened plate resting on viscoelastic Pasternak foundation is proposed in this paper. Additionally, the Newmark method is employed to solve the governing equation. Thereafter, several numerical examples of different boundary conditions, foundation coefficients, pulse loads, damping ratios and arrangement of stiffeners are calculated. The relative errors in the results obtained by comparing the present results to the finite element results or the literature solutions are all less than 5%, which demonstrates the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method in analyzing the dynamic properties of stiffened plate resting on viscoelastic Pasternak foundation. The present approach has advantages and potential for solving problems of complex rib layouts and structural optimization for ribbed plate resting on the foundation in engineering.