Free vibration analysis of axisymmetric laminated composite circular and annular plates using Chebyshev collocation

Solutions, based on principle of collocating the equations of motion at Chebyshev zeroes, are presented for the free vibration analysis of laminated, polar orthotropic, circular and annular plates. The analysis is restricted to axisymmetric free vibration of the plates and employs first-order shear deformation theory for the displacement field, in terms of midplane displacements, u, α and w. The eigenvalue problem is defined in terms of three equations of motion in terms of the radial co-ordinate r, the radial variation of the displacements being represented in polynomial series, with appropriate boundary conditions. Numerical results are presented to show the validity and accuracy of the proposed method. Results of parametric studies for laminated polar orthotropic circular and annular plates with different boundary conditions, orthotropic ratios, lamination sequences, number of layers and shear deformation are also presented.