New Qualitative Method to Investigate the Vibration Behavior of Orthotropic Composite Plates: Thickness Effect

In this paper, we propose a quick and easy method to investigate the vibration behavior of orthotropic composite plates under the effect of thickness. In previous works, many investigations were carried out to challenge the effectiveness of this new method. To get insight about the level of accuracy of this method, the effect of boundary conditions, rigidity ratio and the effect of dimension ratio were discussed. The prediction of frequency responses using the qualitative method match very well with those obtained from finite element method. The first six frequency modes are obtained from the results achieved by the finite element method using ANSYS. The comparative and qualitative analysis of frequency responses allowed the justification of the position and the threshold of the respective modal frequencies of the plates in accordance with the results obtained from the numerical and analytical methods in use.