Large amplitude vibration of an initially stressed cross ply laminated plates

In this paper, nonlinear equations of large amplitude vibration for a laminated plate in a general state of nonuniform initial stress are derived. The equations include the effects of transverse shear and rotary inertia. Using these derived governing equations, the large amplitude vibration behaviour of an initially stressed cross-ply laminated plate is studied. The initial stress is taken to be a combination of pure bending stress plus an extensional stress in the plane of the plate. The Galerkin method is used to reduce the governing nonlinear partial differential equations to ordinary nonlinear differential equations and the Runge-Kutta method is used to obtain the nonlinear to linear frequencies. The frequency responses of nonlinear vibration are sensitive of the vibration amplitude, aspect ratio, thickness ratio, modulus ratio. stack sequence, layer number and state of initial stresses. The effects of various parameters oil the large amplitude free vibrations are presented. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.