Free vibration analysis of laminated composite plates using meshless finite volume method

In this paper, a novel meshless finite volume (MFV) method is proposed for free vibration analysis of laminated composite plates. In this study, moving least square approximation (MLS) technique is utilized to approximate field variables. In order to discretize the problem domain, Delaunay triangulation scheme is applied to create control volumes (CV) based on a set of arbitrary distributed nodes. The equilibrium equations of each CV are written based on the stress resultant forces acting on the boundaries of CV where the first order shear deformation theory (FSDT) has been utilized in the formulation. In order to demonstrate the capability of the method, various test problems with different thicknesses, shapes, stacking sequences and boundary conditions are solved. The high accuracy and shear locking free property of the present method are revealed by comparing the obtained results with the exact solutions and the results of other numerical methods presented in literature. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.