Free vibration characteristics of laminated composite stiffened plates: Experimental and numerical investigation

This investigation deals with the numerical and experimental study on the free vibration of woven glass fibre laminated composite stiffened plates. Thirty-four stiffened plates fabricated from woven glass fibre and binder (epoxy and hardener) by varying the parameters, such as numbers, types and orientation of stiffeners; depth of stiffener to thickness of plate ratio; and aspect ratio and boundary conditions of plates; are tested in FFT analyser to obtain their natural frequencies. A finite element model is used for vibration of laminated composite stiffened plates for validation of the experimental results. The experimental and numerical results are compared, which shows a very good agreement between them. From this study, it is observed that the above-mentioned parameters significantly influence the fundamental frequency. Since, the experimental investigation on laminated composite stiffened plates is scanty; this study can be considered as a reference for the future work.