Study on Free Vibration Analysis of Rectangular Plate Structures Using Finite Element Method

Abstract The present research work aims to determine the natural frequencies of an isotropic thin plate using Finite element method. The calculated frequencies have been compared with those obtained from exact Levy type solution. Based on this Kirchhoff plate theory, the stiffness and mass matrices are calculated using Finite Element Method (FEM). This methodology is useful for obtaining the natural frequencies of the considered rectangular plate. Numerical results obtained from FEM of the simply supported rectangular plates are giving close agreement with the exact solutions results. Moreover, the results showed that the variation of the plate thickness doesn’t affect the frequency parameter.