Free transverse vibration analysis of thin rectangular plates locally suspended on elastic beam

Free transverse vibration of thin rectangular plates locally suspended on deformable beam is presented using generalized differential quadrature method. The plate is completely free at all edges except a local region which is attached to a thin beam with rectangular cross section. The other side of the beam is fixed and the whole system is subjected to free transverse vibrations. According to classical plate theory and Euler-Bernoulli beam assumption, two coupled partial differential equations of the system are obtained. The governing equations and solution domain are discretized based on the generalized differential quadrature method and natural frequencies of the plate attached to the beam are obtained. Accuracy of the predictions is investigated using four simplified cases which show reasonably good agreement. For the general case, however, due to lack of data in the literature, predictions are compared with finite element results, which also demonstrate close agreement.