FREE-VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF ORTHOTROPIC ELLIPTIC PLATES RESTING ON ARBITRARILY DISTRIBUTED POINT SUPPORTS

The free vibration of point supported elliptical plates is studied analytically with consideration of rectangular orthotropy. Apparently, this problem has been previously unsolved in the literature. An analytical method used is an accurate variational approach, the Ritz-Lagrange multiplier method which constitutes an extension of the classical Ritz method. In numerical examples, elliptical plates on some symmetric point supports are considered, and it is shown that the method is straightforwardly applicable to determination of frequencies for elliptical plates resting on various support configurations.