A simple and accurate mixed FE-DQ formulation for free vibration of rectangular and skew Mindlin plates with general boundary conditions

A simple and accurate mixed finite element-differential quadrature formulation is proposed to study the free vibration of rectangular and skew Mindlin plates with general boundary conditions. In this technique, the original plate problem is reduced to two simple bar (or beam) problems. One bar problem is discretized by the finite element method (FEM) while the other by the differential quadrature method (DQM). The mixed method, in general, combines the geometry flexibility of the FEM and high accuracy and efficiency of the DQM and its implementation is more easier and simpler than the case where the FEM or DQM is fully applied to the problem. Moreover, the proposed formulation is free of the shear locking phenomenon that may be encountered in the conventional shear deformable finite elements. A simple scheme is also presented to exactly implement the mixed natural boundary conditions of the plate problem. The versatility, accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method for free vibration analysis of rectangular and skew Mindlin plates are tested against other solution procedures. It is revealed that the proposed method can produce highly accurate solutions for the natural frequencies of rectangular and skew Mindlin plates with general boundary conditions.