Jiu Hui Wu A. Q.

Liu
School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798

Exact Solutions for Free-Vibration Analysis of Rectangular Plates Using Bessel Functions
A novel Bessel function method is proposed to obtain the exact solutions for the freevibration analysis of rectangular thin plates with three edge conditions: (i) fully simply supported; (ii) fully clamped, and (iii) two opposite edges simply supported and the other two edges clamped. Because Bessel functions satisfy the biharmonic differential equation of solid thin plate, the basic idea of the method is to superpose different Bessel functions to satisfy the edge conditions such that the governing differential equation and the boundary conditions of the thin plate are exactly satised. It is shown that the proposed method provides simple, direct, and highly accurate solutions for this family of problems. Examples are demonstrated by calculating the natural frequencies and the vibration modes for a square plate with all edges simply supported and clamped. DOI: 10.1115/1.2744043

H. L. Chen
Institute of Vibration and Noise Control, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian 710049, China

Introduction

Thin Plate Theory

The free-vibration analysis of a rectangular plate is of interest in the eld of mechanics, civil, and aerospace engineering. Back in 1823, by using a double trigonometric series, Navier obtained the exact solution of bending of a rectangular plate with all edges simply supported 1 . In 1899, by using a single Fourier series, Levy developed a method for solving the rectangular plate bending problems with two opposite edges simply supported and the two remaining opposite edges with arbitrary conditions of supports 2 . In 1934, Way obtained the exact solutions for the large deection analysis of a clamped circular plate 3 . For the freevibration analysis of rectangular plates, accurate analytical results were presented for the cases having two opposite sides simply supported, whereas the other cases with the possible combinations of clamped, simply supported, and free edge conditions were analyzed by using the Ritz method by Leissa in 1973 4 . In addition, the method of superposition was proposed by Gorman to examine free-vibration analysis of cantilever plates in 1976 5 and that of rectangular plates with a combination of clamped and simplysupported edge conditions in 1977 6 . More recently, many papers on the vibration analysis of rectangular plates have been published 710 . The free-vibration analysis of isotropic and anisotropic rectangular thin plates subjected to general boundary conditions was conducted by using a modied Ritz method by Narita in 2000 10 . For centuries, however, an exact solution for a fully clamped rectangular plate has not yet been obtained, and it is currently considered that an exact solution is not achievable for the rectangular plate problem of this type. In this paper, a Bessel function method is proposed to obtain an exact solution for the vibration problems of a rectangular plate by superposing different Bessel functions to satisfy three edge conditions: i fully simply supported, ii fully clamped, and iii two opposite edges simply supported and the other two edges clamped. By employing the proposed method, the exact solutions of the natural frequencies and mode shapes can be obtained for the rectangular thin plate with the aforementioned edge conditions. This new method provides simple, direct, and highly accurate solutions for this family of problems.
Contributed by the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME for publication in the JOURNAL OF APPLIED MECHANICS. Manuscript received March 14, 2007; nal manuscript received April 23, 2005. Review conducted by Oliver M. OReilly.

The free harmonic vibration of a thin plate with a constant thickness h is governed by the differential equation D
4

hW = 0

where W x , y is a typical mode, 4 is the biharmonic differential operator i.e., 4 = 2 2, 2 = 2 / x2 + 2 / y 2 in Cartesian coordinates , D = Eh3 / 12 1 2 is the bending rigidity with E and being the Youngs modulus and the Poissons ratio, respectively, is the natural frequency, and is the mass density. For a nite solid circular plate, the nth vibration mode of Eq. 1 in polar coordinates is 11 Wn r, = AnJn kr + BnIn kr cos sin n 2

where An and Bn are constants to be determined, Jn and In are the Bessel function and the modied Bessel function of the rst kind of order n, respectively, and k4 = 2 h / D. Thus, in Cartesian coordinates, Eq. 2 can be converted into Wn x,y = AnJn k x2 + y 2 + BnIn k x2 + y 2 cos sin n atan y x 3 According to 12 , there exist the addition formulas, cos sin cos sin

Jn R and

n =
m=

Jnm x Jm y

4a

In R

cos sin

n =
m=

Inm x Im y

cos sin

4b

where is dened as R cos = x y cos , R sin = y sin , and when y approaches 0, approaches 0. To satisfy = atan y / x , = / 2 is selected. Then, Eq. 3 becomes NOVEMBER 2007, Vol. 74 / 1247

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Wn x,y =
m=

AnJnm kx Jm ky + BnInm kx Im ky

cos sin

m 2 5

det

Jnm ka Jm kb

Inm ka Im kb

=0

Equation 5 is the general solution for the vibration modes of solid rectangular plates, where An and Bn can be determined by use of the orthogonal characteristic of these vibration modes. It is noted that Jnm kx Jm ky and Inm kx Im ky are the core parts of the solution, which can be further adopted to construct the freevibration solutions of a rectangular thin plate with different edge conditions. By superposing these Bessel functions to satisfy the edge conditions of a rectangular plate, the exact solution for the free vibration can be obtained. We call this approach the Bessel function method. It will be applied to analyze the free vibration of a rectangular plate with three edge conditions in the sequel.

Equation 9 is the frequency equation for the fully simply supported square plate. For a fully simply supported rectangular plate, the well-known exact solution for the free-vibration analysis was obtained by Navier 1 . In the Navier-type solution, the mode functions and natural frequencies are 4,13 Wm,n = Am,n sin m x n y sin , a b m a
2

m,n = 1,2, . . .
2

10a

k2 =

n b

10b

3 Free-Vibration Analysis of a Rectangular Plate Under Different Edge Conditions

For a rectangular plate with edge lengths a and b, there are eight boundary conditions for every case. Three cases are discussed below: i fully simply supported, ii fully clamped, and iii two opposite edges simply supported and the other two edges clamped. 3.1 Fully Simply Supported Rectangular Plate. In this case, the boundary conditions are
2

W x=0 = 0,

W x=a = 0,

W x2

= 0,
x=0

W x2 W y2

=0
x=a

W y=0 = 0,

W y=b = 0,

W y2

The free-vibration solutions expressed in Eqs. 7 and 9 by the proposed Bessel function method are different from the Naviertype solutions due to the different derivation processes. In the former method, using the Bessel functions in Eq. 5 that satisfy the governing equation 1 , and Eq. 7 is constructed to satisfy the edge conditions in Eq. 6 . In the Navier-type solutions, the double Fourier sine series in Eq. 10a was constructed to satisfy the edge conditions, whereas Eq. 10b was obtained from Eq. 1 . Table 1 compares the rst ten nondimensional natural frequencies ka of a square plate with an edge length of a obtained from Eqs. 9 and 10b , applying the Bessel function method and the Navier-type solution, respectively. It is noted that the two kinds of solutions are different in the sense that the Navier-type natural frequencies are relatively sparse. Because the frequency equations are both derived exactly from the mode function expansions, considering the convergence of Eq. 7 , the natural frequency solutions from Eq. 9 are exact and a complement to the Navier-type solutions. 3.2 Fully Clamped Rectangular Plate. A fully clamped rectangular plate has the boundary conditions

= 0,
y=0

=0 6
y=b

In order to satisfy all the above edge conditions, the vibration mode function can be constructed as Wn,m = An Jnm kx + Jnm k a x + Bn Inm kx + Inm k a x + Im k b y sin m n cos 2 2 Jm ky + Jm k b y Im ky 7
Order 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Table 1 Comparison of the nondimensional natural frequencies using two different methods for a fully simply supported square plate Present theory in Eq. 9 3.6744 6.2931 6.9380 8.7100 9.7066 10.1215 11.0385 12.2961 12.9751 13.2846 Navier-type solution shown in Eq. 10b 4.4429 7.0248 8.8858 9.9346 11.3272 12.9531 13.3286 14.0496 15.7080 17.7715

where the mode subscripts m and n are odd and even numbers for nontrivial solutions, respectively. Based on the following properties of the special functions: Jm 0 = Im 0 = 1 m=0 0 m 0 8a

Jm 0 =

1 m=0 2 1 m= 2 4 0 others

8b
Table 2 Comparison of the nondimensional natural frequencies using three different methods for a fully clamped square plate Order Present theory in Eq. 14 5.9057 8.3466 9.1969 10.6870 11.8367 12.4022 Rayleigh-Ritz method 14 5.9992 8.5680 10.4053 11.4734 11.5000 12.8511 Finite element method 15 5.9540 8.4870 10.1833 11.3759 11.4140

and 1 m=0 2 1 m= 2 4 0 others for the case of a = b, Eq. 7 satises all the edge conditions provided that m = n / 2 and 1248 / Vol. 74, NOVEMBER 2007

Im 0 =

8c

1 2 3 4 5 6

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Fig. 1 Vibration mode functions with n = 2 and m = 1 for a fully simply supported plate at different nondimensional natural frequencies: a ka = 3.6744 and b ka = 10.1215

W x=0 = 0,

W x=a = 0,

W x W y

= 0,
x=0

W x W y

=0
x=a

W y=0 = 0,

W y=b = 0,

= 0,
y=0

=0
y=b

11 The vibration mode function in this case can be constructed as Wn,m = An Jnm kx + Jnm k a x + Bn Inm kx + Inm k a x + Im k b y cos m n cos 2 2 Jm ky + Jm k b y Im ky 12

the discrepancy among them is 3%. It is also known that the results obtained by the Rayleigh-Ritz method constitute upper bounds for the natural frequencies. As shown in Table 2, the rst six natural frequencies from the Rayleigh-Ritz method are almost all higher than the rst six exact eigenfrequencies from Eq. 14 . Therefore, the frequency equation of the Bessel function method for the fully clamped plate is veried. 3.3 Rectangular Plate With Two Opposite Edges Simply Supported and the Other Two Edges Clamped. The rectangular plate in this case has the boundary conditions
2

W x=0 = 0,

W x=a = 0,

W x2 W y

= 0,
x=0

W x2

=0
x=a

where m and n are even numbers. For the fully clamped square plate a = b , since 1 m=1 2 1 m=1 2 0 Jnm ka Jm kb others 0, and 14 Inm ka Im kb

W y=0 = 0,

W y=b = 0,

= 0,
y=0

W y

=0
y=b

15 The vibration mode function in this case can be constructed from 13 Wn,m = An Jnm kx + Jnm k a x Jnm ka Jnm 0 Jm ky + Jm k b y Jm kb Jm 0 + Bn Inm kx + Inm k a x Inm ka Inm 0 Im kb Im 0 exp m i 2 Im ky + Im k b y 16

Jm 0 =

all the above conditions can be satised with m = n / 2, m det =0

Equation 14 is the frequency equation for the fully clamped plate. In order to verify Eq. 14 , we compared the nondimensional frequencies ka of the fully clamped square plate obtained from Eq. 14 , the Rayleigh-Ritz method 14 , and the nite element method 15 . The comparison is summarized in Table 2. As shown in Table 2, the rst two natural frequencies derived from Eq. 14 employing the Bessel function method are very close to those from the Rayleigh-Ritz method and the nite element method, and Journal of Applied Mechanics

where n is an even number. For the case of a = b, all the boundary conditions are satised when m = n / 2, m 0 , 1 , 2, and det Jnm ka Jm kb Inm ka Im kb =0 17

Equation 17 represents the frequency equation for this case. Therefore, the vibration mode functions and frequency equations of the rectangular plate with different edge conditions: i fully simply supported, ii fully clamped, and iii two oppoNOVEMBER 2007, Vol. 74 / 1249

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Fig. 2 Vibration mode functions with n = 6 and m = 3 for a fully simply supported plate at different nondimensional natural frequencies: a ka = 9.7066 and b ka = 12.9751

site edges simply supported and the other two edges clamped, have been derived as Eqs. 7 and 9 , Eqs. 12 and 14 , and Eqs. 16 and 17 , respectively. Based on the derived equations above, the modes shapes and natural frequencies can be obtained.

Numerical Illustrations

In this section, the different vibration mode functions of the square plate with two different edge conditions: i fully simply

Fig. 3 Vibration mode functions with n = 4 and m = 2 for a fully clamped square plate at different nondimensional natural frequencies: a ka = 12.4022 and b ka = 15.5795

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supported and ii fully clamped, are calculated with an edge length of a = 0.18 m. Figures 1 a and 1 b show the vibration mode functions distribution and the corresponding contours for a fully simply supported rectangular plate with n = 2 and m = 1 at a nondimensional natural frequency of 3.6744 and 10.1215, respectively. As shown in Fig. 1 a , it can be seen that, at the lowest natural frequency ka = 3.6744, the boundary conditions in Eq. 6 are satised from the mode distribution and Eq. 7 is validated. In the contour shown at the right-hand side, the only one peak is observed at the center of the square plate. In Fig. 1 b , it is observed that the number of peaks increases as the order of the vibration mode becomes higher. The corresponding contour at the right-hand side shows the distribution of the peaks on the plate under investigation. Figures 2 a and 2 b show the vibration mode functions distribution and the corresponding contours for a fully simply supported rectangular plate with n = 6 and m = 3 at a nondimensional natural frequency of 9.7066 and 12.9751, respectively. As shown in Fig. 2, when n and m vary, the boundary conditions in Eq. 6 are also satised and Eq. 7 is validated. Figures 3 a and 3 b show the vibration mode functions and the corresponding contours for a fully clamped rectangular plate with n = 4 and m = 2 at a nondimensional natural frequency of 12.4022 and 15.5795, respectively. As can be seen in Fig.3, the boundary conditions are satised by employing the Bessel function method and the derived equations are validated.

fundamental structural element employing the proposed method will serve as a base of and provide an insight into the analysis of complex structures.

Acknowledgment
The authors would express our great gratitude to Professor Oliver M. OReilly, Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Mechanics, and the anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions.

References
1 Navier, C. L. M. H., 1823, Extrait des recherches sur la exion des plans elastiques, Bull. Sci. Soc. Philomarhique de Paris, 5, pp. 95102. 2 Levy, M., 1899, Sur Lequilibrie Elastique Dune Plaque Rectangulaire, C. R. Acad. Sci., 129, pp. 535539. 3 Way, S., 1934, Bending of Circular Plates With Large Deections, ASME J. Appl. Mech., 56, pp. 627636. 4 Leissa, A. W., 1973, The Free Vibration of Rectangular Plates, J. Sound Vib., 31, pp. 257293. 5 Gorman, D. J., 1976, Free Vibration Analysis of Cantilever Plates by the Method of Super-Position, J. Sound Vib., 49, pp. 453467. 6 Gorman, D. J., 1977, Free-Vibration Analysis of Rectangular Plates With Clamped-Simply Supported Edge Conditions by the Method of Superposition, ASME J. Appl. Mech., 44, pp. 743749. 7 Pan, E., 2001, Exact Solution for Simply Supported and Multilayered Magneto-Electro-Elastic Plates, ASME J. Appl. Mech., 68, pp. 608618. 8 Cheng, Z.-Q., and Reddy, J. N., 2003, Greens Functions for Innite and Semi-Innite Anisotropic Thin Plates, ASME J. Appl. Mech., 70, pp. 260 267. 9 Tong, P., and Huang, W., 2002, Large Deection of Thin Plates in Pressure Sensor Applications, ASME J. Appl. Mech., 69, pp. 785789. 10 Narita, Y., 2000, Combinations for the Free-Vibration Behaviors of Anisotropic Rectangular Plates Under General Edge Conditions, ASME J. Appl. Mech., 67, pp. 568573. 11 Ventsel, E., and Krauthammer, T., 2001, Thin Plates and Shells Theory, Analysis, and Applications, Marcel Dekker, New York, pp. 284285. 12 Wang, Z. X., and Guo, D. R., 1989, Special Functions, World Scientic, Singapore, pp. 345455. 13 Zheng, Z., 1980, Mechanical Vibration, Mechanical Industry Press, Beijing. 14 Young, D., 1950, Vibration of Rectangular Plates by the Ritz Method, ASME J. Appl. Mech., 17, pp. 448453. 15 Kerboua, Y., Lakis, A. A., Thomasb, M., and Marcouiller, L., 2007, Hybrid Method for Vibration Analysis of Rectangular Plates, Nucl. Eng. Des., 237, pp. 791801.

Conclusions

A novel Bessel function method is presented and used to obtain the exact solutions for the free-vibration analysis of a rectangular plate with three different edge conditions: i fully simply supported, ii fully clamped, and iii two opposite edges simply supported and the other two edges clamped. This proposed method provides the exact solutions for the natural frequencies and mode shapes of a rectangular plate. Because of the high accuracy provided by the proposed method, it can be used to verify other free-vibration analyses and to evaluate the precision of commercial software. The direct exact solutions obtained for the most

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