On the modelling of dynamic problems for plates with a periodic structure

Summary The subject of analysis is the bending of elastic plates exhibiting a nonhomogeneous periodic structure and/or a periodically variable thickness in a certain direction parallel to the plate's midplane. The fundamental modelling problem is how to obtain an effective 2D-model of a plate under consideration, i.e., a 2D-model represented by PDEs with constant coefficients. This problem for periodic plates has been solved independently in 5] and 10], using asymptotic homogenization. However, homogenization neglects dynamic phenomena related to the plate's rotational inertia and cannot be applied to the analysis of higher-order vibration frequences. The main aim of this contribution is to formulate a new non-asymptotic effective 2D-model of a periodic plate which is free from the mentioned drawbacks and describes the dynamic behaviour of plates having the thickness of the order of the period length. The proposed model is applied to the analysis of some vibration problems.