Vibration Analysis of Composite Rectangular Plates Reinforced along Curved Lines

In the past few decades, composite materials composed of straight fibers and polymer matrix have gained their status as the most promising material for light-weight structures. Technical merit of the composites as tailored material also provided practical advantages in the optimum design process. Recently, it is reported that the fabrication machine has been developed to make curved fibers embedded in the matrix material. Based on such technical advancement, this paper proposes an analytical method to study vibration of composite rectangular plates reinforced along curved lines. The approach is based on the Ritz method where variable fiber direction can be accommodated. For this purpose, the fibers continuously changing their direction are formulated as the variable bending stiffness in the total potential energy. A frequency equation is derived by the Ritz minimizing process, and frequency parameters are calculated as the eigenvlaues in the eigenvalue problem. In numerical results, the accuracy of the method is presented by comparing present results with FEM results. The advantages of present plate are confirmed by comparing natural frequencies and mode shapes with those of conventional composite and isotropic plates, and the effectiveness of the new solution to the most recent problem is demonstrated.