Vibration Analysis of Plates by MLS-Element Method

Abstract

This paper presents a novel numerical method, the moving least square element (MLS‐element) method for the free vibration analysis of plates based on the Mindlin shear deformable plate theory. In the MLS‐element method, a plate can be first divided into multiple elements which are connected through selected nodal points on the interfaces of the elements. An element can be of any shape and the size of the element varies dependent on the problem at hand. The shape functions of the element for the transverse displacement and the rotations are derived based on the MLS interpolation technique. The convergence and accuracy of the method can be controlled by either increasing the number of elements or by increasing the number of MLS interpolation points within elements. Two selected examples for vibration of a simply supported square Mindlin plate and a clamped L‐shaped Mindlin plate are studied to illustrate the versatility and accuracy of the proposed method. It shows that the proposed method is highly accurate and flexible for the vibration analysis of plate problems. The method can be further developed to bridge the existing meshless method and the powerful finite element method in dealing with various engineering computational problems, such as large deformation and crack propagation in solid mechanics.