Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg.

194 (2005) 42654278

www.elsevier.com/locate/cma

Free vibration analysis of symmetric laminated

composite plates by FSDT and radial basis functions
A.J.M. Ferreira *, C.M.C. Roque, R.M.N. Jorge
Departamento de Engenharia Mecanica e Gestao Industrial, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto,
Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Received 5 July 2004; received in revised form 9 November 2004; accepted 18 November 2004

Abstract
In this paper, we use the rst-order shear deformation theory in the multiquadric radial basis function (MQRBF)
procedure for predicting the free vibration behavior of moderately thick symmetrically laminated composite plates.
The transverse deection and two rotations of the laminate are independently approximated with the MQRBF approximation. The natural frequencies of vibration are computed for various laminated plates and compared with some available published results. Through numerical experiments, the capability and eciency of the MQRBF method for
eigenvalue problems are demonstrated, and the numerical accuracy and convergence are thoughtfully examined.

2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Composite plates; Free vibration; Radial basis functions; Symmetric laminates

1. Introduction
Recently, radial basis functions (RBFs) have enjoyed considerable success and research as a technique
for interpolating data and functions. A radial basis function, /(kx
xjk) is a spline that depends on the
Euclidian distance between distinct data centers xj, j 1; 2; . . . ; N 2 Rn , also called nodal or collocation
points.
Although most work to date on RBFs relates to scattered data approximation and in general to interpolation theory, there has recently been an increased interest in their use for solving partial dierential
equations (PDEs). This approach, which approximates the whole solution of the PDE directly using RBFs,

Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 22 957 8713; fax: +351 22 953 7352.
E-mail address: ferreira@fe.up.pt (A.J.M. Ferreira).

0045-7825/$ - see front matter
2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cma.2004.11.004

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A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

is very attractive due to the fact that this is truly a mesh-free technique. Kansa [1] introduced the concept of
solving PDEs using RBFs.
Kansas method is an unsymmetric RBF collocation method based upon the MQ interpolation functions, in which the shape parameter is considered to be variable across the problem domain. The distribution of the shape parameter is obtained by an optimization approach, in which the value of the shape
parameter is assumed to be proportional to the curvature of the unknown solution of the original partial
dierential equation. In this way, it is possible to reduce the condition number of the matrix at the expense
of implementing an additional iterative algorithm. In the present work, we will implement the unsymmetric
global collocation method in its simpler form, without any optimization of the interpolation functions and
the collocation points.
Structures composed of laminated materials are among the most important structures used in modern
engineering and, especially, in the aerospace industry. Such lightweight structures are also being increasingly used in civil, mechanical and transportation engineering applications. The rapid increase of the industrial use of these structures has necessitated the development of new analytical and numerical tools that are
suitable for the analysis and study of the mechanical behavior of such structures. The behavior of structures
composed of advanced composite materials is considerably more complicated than for isotropic ones. The
strong inuences of anisotropy, the transverse stresses through the thickness of a laminate and the stress
distributions at interfaces are among the most important factors that aect the general performance of such
structures. The use of shear deformation theories has been the topic of intensive research, as in [214],
among many others.
The analysis of laminated plates by nite element methods is now considerably established. The use of
alternative methods such as the meshless methods based on radial basis functions is attractive due to the
absence of a mesh and the ease of collocation methods. The use of radial basis function for the analysis
of structures and materials has been previously studied by numerous authors [1526]. More recently the
authors have applied RBFs to the static deformations of composite beams and plates [2729].
In this paper it is investigated the use of radial basis functions to composite plates using a rst-order
shear deformation theory. The quality of the present method in predicting free vibrations of laminated
composite plates is compared and discussed with other methods in some numerical examples.

2. The radial basis function method

2.1. The eigenproblem
Radial basis functions (RBF) approximations are grid-free numerical schemes that can exploit accurate
representations of the boundary, are easy to implement and can be spectrally accurate [30,31].
In this section the formulation of a global unsymmetrical collocation RBF-based method to compute
eigenvalues of elliptic operators is presented.
Consider a linear elliptic partial dierential operator L and a bounded region X in Rn with some boundary oX. The eigenproblem looks for eigenvalues (k) and eigenvectors (u) that satisfy
Lu ku 0
LB u 0

in X;

on oX;

1
2

where LB is a linear boundary operator. The eigenproblem of (1) and (2) is replaced by a nite-dimensional
eigenvalue problem, based on RBF approximations.
The operator L is approximated by a matrix that incorporates the boundary conditions and then solve
the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of this matrix by standard techniques.

A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

4267

2.2. Radial basis functions

The radial basis function (/) approximation of a function (u) is given by
~
ux

N
X

ai /kx
y i k2 ;

x 2 Rn ;

i1

where yi, i = 1, . . . , N is a nite set of distinct points (centers) in Rn . The coecients ai are calculated so that
~
u satises some boundary conditions. The most used RBFs are
/(r) = r3
/(r) = r2log(r)
/r 1
rm
pr
2
/r p
e
cr

/r c2 r2
/(r) = (c2 + r2)
1/2

Cubic
Thin plate splines
Wendland functions
Gaussian
Multiquadrics
Inverse multiquadrics

where the Euclidian distance r is real and non-negative and c is a shape parameter, a positive constant.
Hardy [32] introduced multiquadrics in the analysis of scattered geographical data. In 1990s Kansa [1]
used multiquadrics for the solution of partial dierential equations. Considering N distinct interpolations,
and knowing u(xj), j = 1,2, . . . , N, we nd ai by the solution of a N N linear system Aa = u, where A =
[/(kx
yik2)]NN, a = [a1, a2, . . . , aN]T and u = [u(x1), u(x2), . . . , u(xN)]T. The RBF interpolation matrix A
is positive denite for some RBFs [33], but in general provides ill-conditioned systems. This ill-conditioning
problem is due to full matrices produced by the collocation method and worsens with the increase of number of nodes. However it was shown by Schaback that the more ill-conditioned the problem the better the
solution, until a atness of the function occurs. In our numerical experiments this ill-conditioning did not
produced any inconvenience to quality of solution.
2.3. Solution of the eigenproblem
We follow a simple scheme for the solution of the eigenproblem (1) and (2). We consider NI nodes in the
interior of the domain and NB nodes on the boundary, with N = NI + NB.
We denote interpolation points by xi 2 X, i = 1, . . . , NI and xi 2 oX, i = NI + 1, . . . , N. For the interior
points we have that
N
X
ai L/kx
y i k2 k~
uxj ; j 1; 2; . . . ; N I
4
i1

or
uI ;
LI a k~

where
LI L/kx
y i k2 N I N :

For the boundary conditions we have

N
X
ai LB /kx
y i k2 0; j N I 1; . . . ; N

i1

or
Ba 0:

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A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

Therefore we can write a nite-dimensional problem as a generalized eigenvalue problem

" #
" #
LI
AI
ak
a;
B
0

where
AI /kxN I
y j k2 N I N ;

BI LB /kxN I 1
y j k2 N B N :

We seek the generalized eigenvalues and eigenvectors of these matrices. The generalized eigenvalue problem also suers from ill-conditioning. The global MQ RBF or generally the global RBF problem can be
ill-conditioned. This is a known phenomena when the number of nodes increase. In our experiments the illconditioned matrices brought no problems. Ling and Kansa [34] recently proposed a preconditioner to
solve this issue. The plate problems we consider here are very smooth so the ill-conditioning is not a
problem.
Although the size of the problem is larger than NI there is no need of inverting the matrix A as in the next
algorithm.
In this paper we follow a second algorithm that can be formulated as follows. We can write
 I 
u
aA
;
10
0N B 1
where 0pq is a p q zero matrix, and
" #
AI
A
:
B

11

Combining (3)(11) we can write a standard eigenvalue problem as

L/ uI kuI ;
where L/ is a NI NI matrix given by


I N I N I
L/ LI A
1
:
0N B N I

12

13

The RBF approximation of the eigenpairs of (1) and (2) is now obtained by computing the eigenvalues and
eigenvectors of the matrix L/. The eigenproblem (12) has dimension NI NI whereas eigenproblem (9) has
dimension N N. However in (12) we need to invert matrix A.

3. Free vibration analysis of symmetric laminated plates

Based on the FSDT (rst-order shear deformation theory), the transverse displacement w(x, y) and the
rotations hx(x, y) and hy(x, y) about the y- and x-axes are independently interpolated due to uncoupling between inplane displacements and bending displacements for symmetrically laminated plates. The equations
of motion for the free vibration of laminated plates [3,35] are:
o2 hx
o2 hy
o2 hy
o2 hx
o 2 hx
2D16
D66 2
D16 2 D12 D66
2
ox
ox
oxoy
oxoy
oy




2
2
o hy
ow
ow
o hx
D26 2
kA45 hy

kA55 hx
I2 2 ;
oy
ox
oy
ot

D11

14

A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

o2 hx
o2 hy
o2 hx
o2 hy
o2 hx
2D26
D26 2
D66 2 D12 D66
2
ox
ox
oxoy
oxoy
oy




2
2
o hy
ow
ow
o hy
D22 2
kA44 hy

kA45 hx
I2 2 ;
oy
ox
oy
ot

4269

D16











o
ow
ow
o
ow
ow
o2 w
kA45 hy
kA44 hy
kA55 hx

kA45 hx
I0 2 ;
ox
oy
ox
oy
oy
ox
ot

15

16

where Dij and Aij are the bending and shear stiness components, k is the shear correction factor, as dened
in the next section, and Ii are the mass inertias dened as [3]
I0

h
2

q dz;

h2

I2

h
2

qz2 dz:

17

h2

Here q and h denote the density and the total thickness of the composite plate, respectively. The bending
moments and shear forces are expressed as functions of the displacement gradients and the material constitutive equations by
M x D11



o/y
o/x
o/x o/y
D12
D16

;
ox
oy
oy
ox

18

M y D12



o/y
o/x
o/x o/y
D22
D26

;
ox
oy
oy
ox

19



o/y
o/x
o/x o/y
D26
D66

;
ox
oy
oy
ox




ow
ow
Qx kA55 hx
kA45 hy
;
ox
oy




ow
ow
Qy kA45 hx
kA55 hy
:
ox
oy

M xy D16

20

21

22

For free vibration problems we assume harmonic solution in terms of displacements w, hx, hy in the form
wx; y; t W w; yeixt ;

23

hx x; y; t Wx w; yeixt ;

24

hy x; y; t Wy w; yeixt ;

25

where x is the frequency of natural vibration. Substituting the harmonic expansion into equations of motion we obtain the following equations in terms of the amplitudes W, Wx, Wy
o2 W x
o2 W y
o2 W y
o2 W x
o2 W x
2D16
D66
D16
D12 D66
2
2
ox
ox
oxoy
oxoy
oy 2




o2 W y
oW
oW
D26

kA45 Wy

kA55 Wx

I 2 x2 Wx ;
oy
ox
oy 2

D11

26

4270

A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

o2 Wx
o2 W y
o2 W x
o2 W y
o2 W x
2D26
D26
D66
D12 D66
2
2
ox
ox
oxoy
oxoy
oy 2




2
o Wy
oW
oW
D22

kA44 Wy
27

kA45 Wx

I 2 x2 Wy ;
2
oy
ox
oy










o
oW
oW
o
oW
oW
kA45 Wy
kA44 Wy
kA55 Wx

kA45 Wx

I 0 x2 W :
ox
oy
ox
oy
oy
ox

D16

28
The boundary conditions for an arbitrary edge with simply supported, clamped and free edge conditions
are as follows:
(a) Simply supported.
SS1, w = 0; Mn = 0; Mns = 0.
SS2, w = 0; Mn = 0; hs = 0.
(b) Clamped, w = 0; hn = 0; hs = 0.
(c) Free, Qn = 0; Mn = 0; Mns = 0.
In previous equations, the subscripts n and s refer to the normal and tangencial directions of the edge,
respectively; Mn, Mns and Qn represent the normal bending moment, twisting moment and shear force on
the plate edge; hn and hs represent the rotations about the tangencial and normal coordinates at the plate
edge. The stress resultants on an edge whose normal is represented by n = (nx, ny) can be expressed as
M n n2x M x 2nx ny M xy n2y M y ;

29

M ns n2x
n2y M xy
nx ny M y
M x ;

30

Q n nx Q x ny Q y ;

31

h n nx hx ny hy ;

32

h s nx hy
ny hx ;

33

where nx and ny are the direction cosines of a unit normal vector at a point at the laminated plate boundary
[3,35].
4. Discretization of the equations of motion and boundary conditions
The multiquadric method follows a simple implementation procedure. The discretization starts from the
calculation of a as in Eq. (10). This vector is then used to obtain solution u and derivatives of u as
N
X
~
u
aj / j ;
34
j1
N
o/j
o~
u X

;
aj
ox
ox
j1

35

N
o2 /j
o2 ~
u X

a
; etc:
j
ox2
ox2
j1

36

A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

4271

The equations of motion and the boundary conditions can now be discretized according to the multiquadric
radial basis function method, as
2
2
N
N
N
X
X
X
o2 / j
o2 / j
Wy o / j
Wy o /j
Wx

2D

D
a

a
a
16
12
66
16
j
j
j
ox2
ox2
oxoy
oxoy
j1
j1
j1
j1
!
2
N
N
N
N
X
X
X
X
o2 /j
o/j
Wy o /j
Wy
x
aW

D
a


kA
a
/

aWj
D66
26
45
j
j
j
j
2
2
oy
oy
oy
j1
j1
j1
j1
!
N
N
N
X
X
X
o/j
W
2
x
x
aW
/

a
x
aW

kA55

I
2
j
j
j /j ;
j
ox
j1
j1
j1

D11

N
X

2
2
N
N
N
X
X
X
o2 / j
o2 /j
Wy o / j
Wy o / j
Wx

2D

D
a

a
a
66
12
66
26
j
j
j
ox2
ox2
oxoy
oxoy
j1
j1
j1
j1
!
2
N
N
N
N
X
X
X
X
o2 /j
o/j
Wy o /j
Wy
x
aW

D
a


kA
a
/

aWj
D26
22
44
j
j
j
j
2
2
oy
oy
oy
j1
j1
j1
j1
!
N
N
N
X
X
X
o/j
W
x
aW
aWj
aj y /j ;

kA45

I 2 x2
j /j
ox
j1
j1
j1

D16

N
X

x
aW
j

37

x
aW
j

"
!
!#
N
N
N
N
X
X
X
X
o/j
o/j
o
Wy
W
Wx
W
kA45
aj /j
aj
aj / j
aj
kA55
ox
oy
ox
j1
j1
j1
j1
"
!
!#
N
N
N
N
N
X
X
X
X
X
o/j
o/j
o
Wy
W
Wx
W
kA44
aj / j
aj
aj /j
aj
aWj /j ;

kA45

I 0 x2
oy
oy
ox
j1
j1
j1
j1
j1

38

39

where N represents the total number of points of the structure. The vector aWx corresponds to the vector of
unknowns related to rotation Wx.
Boundary conditions can be discretized as follows. For a simply supported plate, SS2 can be discretized
as follows
w0!

N
X

aWj /j 0;

40

j1

!
N
N 
X
X
o/j
o/j
Wy o/j
Wy o/j
Wx
Mn 0 !
D12
D16
aj
D11
aj
aj
ox
ox
ox
oy
j1
j1
j1
!
N
N
N 
X
X
X
o/j
o/j
Wy o/j
Wy o/j
Wx
Wx
D22
D26
aj
aj
aj
aj
2nx ny D12
ox
ox
ox
oy
j1
j1
j1
!
N
N
N 
X
X
X
o/j
o/j
Wy o/j
Wy o/j
2
Wx
Wx
D26
D66
aj
0;
aj
aj
aj
ny D16
ox
ox
ox
oy
j1
j1
j1
N
X

n2x

hs 0 ! nx

N
X
j1

x
aW
j

aj y /j ny

N
X
j1

x
aW
j /j 0:

41

42

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A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

The eigenproblem is then dened as a generalized eigenproblem (9) or standard eigenproblem (12) and
solved by MATLAB in our case.

5. Numerical examples
Unless otherwise stated, all layers of the laminate are assumed to be of the same thickness, density and
made of the same linearly elastic composite material. The following material parameters of a layer are used:
E1
10; 20; 30 or 40;
E2

G12 G13 0:6E2 ;

G3 0:5E2 ;

m12 0:25:

The subscripts 1 and 2 denote the directions normal and transverse to the ber direction in a lamina, which
may be oriented at an angle to the plate axes. The ply angle of each layer is measured from the global x-axis
to the ber direction. Unless otherwise state, the simply supported boundary condition is taken to be the
hard type SS2 condition. In all examples we use a shear correction factor k = p2/12, as proposed in [35].
5.1. Square plates
The rst example considered is a simply supported square plate of the cross-ply lamination [0/90/90/
0]. The thickness and length of the plate are denoted by h and a, respectively. Fig. 1 shows the detailed
conguration of the plate discretized by 11 11 regular grid pattern (a total of 121 nodes). The grid size
for this discretization is d = 0.1. The multiquadric shape parameter is chosen as c = d. The thickness-tospan ratio h/a = 0.2 is employed in the computation. Table 1 lists the fundamental frequency of the simply
supported laminate made of various modulus ratios of E1/E2. It is found that the results are in very close
agreement with the values of [3,36] and the meshfree results of Liew et al. [35] based on the FSDT. The
relative errors between the analytical and present solutions are around 0.2% when we use a 13 13 grid
for E1/E2 = 10 and 0.1% when we use a 13 13 grid for E1/E2 = 40.
The inuence of mixed boundary conditions and span-to-thickness ratio is now considered. The plate is
simply supported along the edges parallel to the x-axis while the other two edges are subjected to simply
supported (S) and clamped (C) boundary conditions. Notations SS, SC, CC refer to the boundary conditions of the two edges parallel to the y
axis only. The three-layer cross-ply [0/90/0] square laminate is
here considered with E1/E2 = 40. The plate is discretized with 7 7, 9 9 and 11 11 grids. In Table 2, re-

Fig. 1. 11 11 regular grid for discretization of the square laminated plate; (d) boundary nodes; (s) interior nodes.

A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

4273

Table 1
The normalized
fundamental frequency of the simply supported cross-ply laminated square plate [0/90/90/0]

w
p
wa2 =h q=E2 ; h=a 0:2
Method

Grid

Liew et al. [35]

Exact (Reddy, Khdeir) [3,36]
Present

E1/E2

77
99
11 11
13 13

10

20

30

40

8.2924
8.2982
8.4011
8.3402
8.3181
8.3101

9.5613
9.5671
9.6793
9.6130
9.5889
9.5801

10.320
10.326
10.430
10.372
10.348
10.349

10.849
10.854
10.966
10.899
10.876
10.864

Table 2
The normalized fundamental frequency
of the three-layer [0/90/0] laminated square plate with various boundary conditions and
p
span to thickness ratios

w wa2 =h q=E2 ; E1 =E2 40
a/h

Method

Liew et al. [35]

Exact (Reddy) [3]
Present

10

100

Liew et al. [35]

Exact (Reddy) [3]
Present

Liew et al. [35]

Exact (Reddy) [3]
Present

Liew et al. [35]

Exact (Reddy) [3]
Present

Grid

SS

SC

CC

77
99
11 11

5.205
5.205
5.238
5.218
5.211

5.210
5.211
5.242
5.223
5.217

5.257
5.257
5.257
5.269
5.263

77
99
11 11

10.290
10.290
10.380
10.326
10.307

10.647
10.646
10.715
10.673
10.658

11.266
11.266
11.316
11.285
11.274

77
99
11 11

14.767
14.767
14.956
14.845
14.804

17.176
17.175
17.317
17.299
17.199

19.669
19.669
19.743
19.693
19.678

77
99
11 11

18.769
18.891
15.679
17.758
18.355

28.164
28.501
28.088
28.125
28.165

40.004
40.743
43.359
41.210
40.234

sults are compared with Liew et al. [35] and Reddy [3]. It is found that the present results are in excellent
agreement with exact results and very close to Liews results. The boundary conditions play no essential role
in the quality of solution. For SS conditions the dierence of present results to exact vary from 0.11%
(a/h = 2) to 0.25% for a/h = 10. However, for a/h = 100, the dierence to exact is about 2.8%. For SC conditions dierence of present results to exact vary from 0.11% (a/h = 2) to 0.14% for a/h = 10. However, for
a/h = 100, the dierence to exact is about 1.2%. This last result diers only 0.0036% from results of Liew.
For CC conditions the dierence of present results to exact vary from 0.11% (a/h = 2) to 0.04% for a/h = 10.
However, for a/h = 100, the dierence to exact is about 1.25%. This last result diers only 0.57% from
results of Liew.
Comparison of natural frequencies for the rst three mode numbers with other theoretical results of
Khdeir [36] and numerical results of Liew et al. [35] is presented in Table 3, with a 13 13 grid. It is found

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A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

Table 3
Comparison of
normalized natural frequencies of the three-layer [0/90/0] laminated square plate with various boundary conditions
p
(

w wa2 =h q=E2 , E1/E2 = 40, a/h = 10, 13 13 nodes)
Modes

Method

SS

SC

CC

Liew et al. [35]

FSDT [36]
Present

14.767
14.766
14.784(0.12)

17.176
17.175
17.178(0.02)

19.669
19.669
19.667(0.01)

Liew et al. [35]

FSDT [36]
Present

22.149
22.158
22.208(0.22)

23.668
23.677
23.718(0.17)

25.342
25.349
25.389(0.16)

Liew et al. [35]

FSDT [36]
Present

36.594
36.900
36.916(0.04)

37.415
37.720
37.763(0.11)

38.345
38.650
38.689(0.10)

an excellent agreement of the natural frequencies calculated with the present method and the mentioned
work of Khdeir and Liew. The dierence in percentage to Khdeir is displayed in parenthesis.
5.2. Skew plates
In this section, skew composite laminates with symmetric cross-ply and angle-ply lamination schemes are
considered. Fig. 2 illustrates the skew rhombic laminate with 11 11 discrete grid with skew angle of 45.
Simply supported and clamped boundary conditions are considered and skew angles of 15, 30, 45, 60,
75, 90 are studied. The edge length a to thickness h is taken as 10 and uniform 7 7, 9 9 and 11 11
grids are employed for all plates. Tables 4 and 5 show the natural frequencies of the ve-layer cross-ply
[90/0/90/0/90] laminates with simply supported and clamped boundary conditions, respectively. Tables
6 and 7 show the natural frequencies of the ve-layer angle-ply [45/
45/45/
45/45] laminates with simply supported and clamped boundary conditions, respectively. Tables 8 and 9 show the natural frequencies
of the angle-ply laminates for various mode numbers. Here we used a ner 15 15 grid. In this section results are compared with meshless method by Liew et al. [35] and B-spline method of Wang [37]. It is found a
good agreement of the present method with both reference solutions for both cross-ply and angle-ply laminates. The numerical accuracy is slightly dependent on the skew angle (smaller angles behave worse) but
insensitive to stacking sequence. Due to the collocation scheme near the corners, the clamped boundary
conditions behave better than SS2 simply supported conditions, as expected.

Fig. 2. 11 11 regular grid for discretization of the skew laminated plate (a = 45); (d) boundary nodes; (s) interior nodes.

A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

4275

Table 4
The normalized natural
pfrequencies of the simply supported cross-ply skew laminates [90/0/90/0/90] with various skew angles
(

w wa2 =p2 =h q=E2 , E1/E2 = 40, a/h = 10)
Method
Liew et al. [35]
Wang [37]
Present

Grid

a = 15

a = 30

a = 45

a = 60

a = 75

a = 90

77
99
11 11

9.1315

8.9774
8.9624
8.9586

4.4998

4.4400
4.3999
4.3761

2.8798
2.8825
2.8818
2.8357
2.8228

2.1026
2.0844
2.2239
2.0858
2.0799

1.6886

1.7050
1.6973
1.6917

1.5709
1.5699
1.8480
1.5585
1.5791

Table 5
The normalized
natural frequencies of the clamped cross-ply skew laminates [90/0/90/0/90] with various skew angles

w
p
wa2 =p2 =h q=E2 , E1/E2 = 40, a/h = 10)
Method
Liew et al. [35]
Wang [37]
Present

Grid

a = 15

a = 30

a = 45

a = 60

a = 75

a = 90

77
99
11 11

9.3485

9.3489
9.3577
9.3575

4.9430

4.9771
4.9626
4.9541

3.4723
3.4738
3.5355
3.5066
3.4923

2.7927
2.7921
2.8802
2.8223
2.8005

2.4725

2.5791
2.5126
2.4932

2.3790
2.3820
2.4901
2.4221
2.4021

Table 6
The normalized natural p
frequencies
of the simply supported angle-ply skew laminates [45/
45/45/
45/45] with various skew

angles (

w wa2 =p2 =h q=E2 , E1/E2 = 40, a/h = 10)
Method
Liew et al. [35]
Wang [37]
Present

Grid

a = 150

a = 300

a = 450

a = 600

a = 750

a = 900

77
99
11 11

8.5230

8.4461
8.4115
8.3862

4.0227

3.9643
3.8971
3.8619

2.5028
2.4788
2.5207
2.4974
2.4862

2.0074
2.0002
2.1347
2.0743
2.0382

1.8838

1.8838
1.9004
1.8586

1.8248
1.8792
1.9661
1.8790
1.8357

Table 7
The normalized natural
p frequencies of the clamped angle-ply skew laminates [45/
45/45/
45/45] with various skew angles
(

w wa2 =p2 =h q=E2 , E1/E2 = 40, a/h = 10)
Method
Liew et al. [35]
Wang [37]
Present

Grid

a = 15

a = 30

a = 45

a = 60

a = 75

a = 90

77
99
11 11

9.3079

9.2568
9.2819
9.2866

4.8566

4.8765
4.8631
4.8548

3.3594
3.3523
3.4226
3.3902
3.3747

2.6636
2.6626
2.7638
2.7187
2.6981

2.3504

2.4722
2.4202
2.3962

2.2787
2.2857
2.4088
2.3568
2.3324

6. Conclusions
In this paper we used the multiquadric radial basis function method to analyse free vibrations of symmetric laminated composite plates. The rst-order shear deformation theory set of equations of motion dene a eigenproblem which can be solved by various algorithms. We prefer an algorithm that produces a
smaller eigenproblem, with the additional cost of inverting a matrix.

4276

A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

Table 8
The normalized natural frequencies for various mode
numbers of the simply supported angle-ply skew laminates [45/
45/45/
45/
p
45] with various skew angles (

w wa2 =p2 =h q=E2 , E1 =E2 40, a=h 10, 15 15 nodes)
a

Source

Mode
1

10.527
10.489

12.033
12.026

13.517
13.526

14.908
14.888

16.302
16.256

17.388
17.379

17.881
17.580

10.695
10.762

11.085
11.127

15

Liew et al. [35]

Present

8.6071
8.3567

30

Liew et al. [35]

Present

4.0269
3.8264

5.7153
5.7799

7.1165
7.1652

8.4831
8.4668

8.6817
8.6433

9.8272
9.8235

45

Liew et al. [35]

Wang [37]
Present

2.5128
2.4788
2.4589

4.2184
4.2214
4.2624

5.5842
5.5857
5.5981

5.6579
5.5981
5.6027

6.9700
7.0029
6.9983

7.6413
7.6255
7.6964

8.2882
8.2928
8.2882

8.9075
8.8460
8.8868

60

Liew et al. [35]

Wang [37]
Present

2.0048
2.0002
1.9834

3.6181
3.6269
3.6743

4.3073
4.2830
4.3143

5.0523
5.0708
5.0831

6.2445
6.2499
6.3627

6.4914
6.5351
6.5872

6.7627
6.7219
6.8247

7.7242
7.7248
7.8022

75

Liew et al. [35]

Present

1.8822
1.8161

3.4856
3.4898

3.6425
3.6272

5.0403
5.0473

5.5746
5.7081

5.7213
5.8617

6.5518
6.7139

7.0695
7.1793

90

Liew et al. [35]

Wang [37]
Present

1.8466
1.8792
1.7960

3.3774
3.3776
3.3605

3.6425
3.6924
3.7124

4.9661
4.9682
4.9402

5.4348
5.4835
5.6044

5.5187
5.6002
5.6909

6.5628
6.5475
6.6156

6.8375
6.9139
7.0022

Table 9
The normalized natural frequencies forp
various
mode numbers of the clamped angle-ply skew laminates [45/
45/45/
45/45] with
various skew angles (

w wa2 =p2 =h q=E2 , E1/E2 = 40, a/h = 10, 15 15 nodes)
a

Source

Mode
1

11.155
11.124

12.572
12.572

13.966
13.982

15.233
15.302

16.535
16.626

17.401
17.460

17.719
17.912

10.181
10.214

10.959
10.950

11.403
11.458

15

Liew et al. [35]

Present

9.3077
9.2863

30

Liew et al. [35]

Present

4.8564
4.8452

6.3882
6.3803

7.6800
7.6862

8.8615
8.8432

8.9977
9.0157

45

Liew et al. [35]

Wang [37]
Present

3.3579
3.3523
3.3599

4.8158
4.8079
4.8238

6.0818
6.0520
6.0692

6.1053
6.1029
6.1277

7.4101
7.4169
7.4503

7.9634
7.9276
7.9589

8.6367
8.6466
8.6777

9.1608
9.0871
9.1166

60

Liew et al. [35]

Wang [37]
Present

2.6627
2.6626
2.6793

4.1380
4.1367
4.1651

4.7258
4.7227
4.7566

5.4975
5.4950
5.5375

6.5481
6.5410
6.5938

6.8899
6.8830
6.9408

7.0209
7.0054
7.0608

7.9777
7.9624
8.0417

75

Liew et al. [35]

Present

2.3499
2.3743

3.8931
3.9405

4.0536
4.0914

5.3120
5.3898

5.8764
5.9401

6.0238
6.0844

6.8027
6.9289

7.2455
7.3393

90

Liew et al. [35]

Wang [37]
Present

2.2785
2.2857
2.3100

3.7383
3.7392
3.7854

3.9583
3.9813
4.0251

5.1836
5.1800
5.2530

5.6808
5.7019
5.7783

5.8066
5.8455
5.9121

6.7358
6.7167
6.8256

7.0046
7.0452
7.1515

The present results were compared with existing nite element or meshless schemes and are in very good
agreement.
Due to the collocation scheme near the plate corners, the results for clamped skew plates are always better than simply supported plates.

A.J.M. Ferreira et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 194 (2005) 42654278

4277

The present method is a simple yet powerful alternative to other nite element or meshless methods in
the free vibration analysis of laminated composite plates.

Acknowledgement
The nancial support of the Materials Network for the Atlantic Area, of the Interreg IIIB programme of
the European Commission is gratefully acknowledged. Also the nancial support of the National Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) is gratefully acknowledged.

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