The Higher Frequency of Free Vibrations of Thin Annular Plates Made of Functionally Graded Material

Subject of this paper is a thin plate with a characteristic geometry: periodic in one direction and smoothly varying along the other. The aim of the contribution is to formulate and apply the averaged model which can describe higher frequencies of free vibrations. Problem of finding frequencies of free vibrations is very important. It could be applied to many engineering problems such as resonance phenomena, wave propagation, absorption of vibrations and many others. When the considered plate is made of an isotropic material, we can find the first, the second and the others frequencies in simply way. But if we consider plate made of a functionally graded material 1], which have varying properties and which is made of two components, this problem is more complicated. In this cause, apart from family of the base frequencies (first, second, etc), which depend on macroscopic properties of the plate, we have the higher frequency, which depends on a microscopic structure. We can find many papers describing the base frequencies of free vibrations for many different types of structures (for example 2] for considered type of plate). In this paper, we find the higher frequency. For solving this problem, we use the tolerance averaging technique described in 3]. This theory allows to take into account the microstructure size and to find the higher frequency of free vibrations. The equations have smooth coefficients. They can be solved numerically with help of the finite difference method, in polar coordinates for an annular plate. Next, we use special procedure for selecting of the higher frequencies of free vibrations, which depend on the microstructure size, from the list of all frequencies. After that we analyze an influence of ratios of material properties and the microstructure size on the higher frequency of free vibrations. (© 2010 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)