Free Vibration Behavior of Angle-Ply Laminated Composite Stiffened Plates

This paper reports for the first time the experimental investigation on the free vibration characteristics of angle-ply laminated composite stiffened plates along with the numerical investigation. The natural frequencies of these plates are computed experimentally using an FFT analyzer and numerically by employing the finite element method with combination of isoparametric nine nodded plate and three nodded beam elements. Angle-ply laminated stiffened plates are fabricated using woven glass fiber fabrics and epoxy by hand layup technique. The effects of various support conditions; number, orientation and types of stiffeners; aspect ratios of plates and different fiber orientations on the fundamental frequencies of the angle-ply laminated stiffened plates are investigated. These parameters significantly influence the natural frequencies. It is found that there is a very good agreement observed between the fundamental frequencies obtained from both experimental and numerical investigation. Mode shapes are also presented for angle-ply laminated square stiffened plates with three different support conditions to justify the trend of increasing/decreasing of the modal frequency with the addition of stiffeners. It is observed that the enhancement of the frequencies of the angle-ply plates due to addition of stiffeners is influenced significantly by the position of stiffeners and consequently mode shapes. As the research on the free vibration behavior of angle-ply stiffened plates with experimental analysis is very rare, this study can be considered as the benchmark for future research.