Vibrations of a polygonal plate having orthogonal straight edges by an extended rayleigh-ritz method

An extended Rayleigh-Ritz method is presented for solving vibration problems of a polygonal plate having orthogonal straight edges. The polygonal plate is considered as an assemblage of several rectangular plates. For each element rectangular plate, the transverse displacement is approximated by interpolation functions corresponding to unknown displacements and slopes at the discrete points which are chosen along the edges, and series of trial functions which satisfy homogeneous artificial boundary conditions. By minimizing the energy functional corresponding to the assumed displacement function, the dynamic stiffness matrix of the element rectangular plate, which is similar to that obtained in the finite element method, is derived. The dynamic stiffness matrix of the whole system is obtained by summing up those of the element rectangular plates. Numerical results are presented for the natural frequencies and mode shapes of cantilever L-shaped and T-shaped plates.