Vibration and damping analysis of multilayered rectangular plates with constrained viscoelastic layers

Governing equations of motion for vibrations of a general multilayered plate consisting of an arbitrary number of alternate stiff and soft layers of orthotropic materials are derived by using variational principles. Extension, bending and in-plane shear deformations in stiff layers and only transverse shear deformations in soft layers are considered as in conventional sandwich structural analysis. In addition to transverse inertia, longitudinal translatory and rotary inertias are included, as such analysis gives higher order modes of vibration and leads to accurate results for relatively thick plates. Vibration and damping analysis of rectangular simply supported plates consisting of alternate elastic and viscoelastic layers is carried out by taking a series solution and applying the correspondence principle of linear viscoelasticity. The damping effectiveness, in term of the system loss factor, for all families of modes for three-, five- and seven-layered plates is evaluated and its variations with geometrical and material property parameters are investigated.