VIBRATION AND DAMPING ANALYSIS OF COMPOSITE LAMINATES USING SHEAR DEFORMABLE FINITE-ELEMENT

The effects of transverse shear deformation on the modal loss factors as well as the natural frequencies of composite laminated plates have been studied using the finite element method based on the shear deformable plate theory. The complex modulus of an orthotropic lamina is employed to model damping effect, and a modal approach to the resultant complex eigenvalue problem is introduced to save a considerable amount of computation time. The present result gives a good agreement with the solution of the modal strain energy (MSE) method. The damping is very high when the composite laminated plates are subject to large transverse shear deformation as well as in-plane shear deformation.