EFFECTS OF GEOMETRIC RATIOS AND FIBRE ORIENTATION ON THE NATURAL FREQUENCIES OF LAMINATED COMPOSITE PLATES B Attaf, M Bachene

The present investigation aims to examine the influence of geometric ratios and fibre orientation on the natural frequencies of fibre-reinforced laminated composite plates using finite element method based on Yang’s theory and his collaborators. The transverse shear and rotatory inertia effects were taken into consideration in the developed Fortran computer program. It has been shown that the use of first-order displacement field provides the same accuracy as higher-order displacement field when the number of elements representing the plate structure is increased (refined mesh). However, poor precision may appear for plates with high thickness-to-side ratio h/a (thickness/side length). This discrepancy limits the application of the developed theory to thick plates (h/a