A Hybrid Analytical and Finite Element Method for Mid-Frequency Vibration Analysis of Plate Structures with Discontinuities

A hybrid analytical and numerical method is presented for the mid-frequency vibration analysis of a class of plate structures with discontinuities based on the concept of structural partitioning. The type of structures considered includes rectangular plates with internal property discontinuity, homogeneous but non-rectangular plates, or built-up structures composed of rectangular homogenous plates with complex joints. Compared with the conventional finite element (FE) method, the present method has the advantage of high accuracy and high efficiency in the analysis of mid-frequency vibration of the structures of concern. The main idea of the proposed approach is to divide the whole structure into uniform rectangular plate regions and other non-rectangular regions. The vibration behavior of the rectangular regions is accurately and efficiently described by analytical wave solutions so that the FE modeling for these regions is not necessary. The other non-rectangular regions are modeled by the conventional FE method. The analytical waves used to describe the rectangular regions are obtained by the symplectic method, thereby avoiding the limitation of the conventional analytical method in dealing with plates having two opposite edges simply supported. By enforcing the displacement continuity and force equilibrium at the connection interfaces, the dynamic coupling is established between the rectangular regions described in terms of the analytical waves and the regions modeled by FEs. Furthermore, the hybrid solution formulation for the mid-frequency vibration of the entire structure is proposed. The high accuracy and efficiency of the present method are demonstrated by several numerical examples, with the effect of element size of the FE regions investigated. Finally, the applicability of the proposed method is analyzed.