Free Bending Vibrations of Adhesively Bonded Orthotropic Plates With a Single Lap Joint

Abstract

This study is concerned with the free bending vibrations of two rectangular, orthotropic plates connected by an adhesively bonded lap joint. The influence of shear deformation and rotatory inertia in plates are taken into account in the equations according to the Mindlin plate theory. The effects of both thickness and shear deformations in the thin adhesive layer are included in the formulation. Plates are assumed to have simply supported boundary conditions at two opposite edges. However, any boundary conditions can be prescribed at the other two edges. First, equations of motion at the overlap region are derived. Then, a Levy-type solution for displacements and stress resultants are used to formulate the problem in terms of a system of first order ordinary differential equations. A revised version of the Transfer Matrix Method together with the boundary and continuity conditions are used to obtain the frequency equation of the system. The natural frequencies and corresponding mode shapes are obtained for identical and dissimilar adherends with different boundary conditions. The effects of some parameters on the natural frequencies are studied and plotted.