Analysis of free vibration of an isotropic plate with surface or internal long crack using generalized differential quadrature method

This article proposes a new method for the analysis of free vibration of a cracked isotropic plate with various boundary conditions based on Kirchhoff's theory. The isotropic plate is assumed to have a part-through surface or internal crack. The crack is considered parallel to one of the plate edges. Existence of the crack modified the governing differential equations which were formulated based on the line-spring model. Generalized differential quadrature method discretizes the obtained governing differential equations and converts them into an algebraic system of equations. Then, an eigenvalue analysis was used to determine the natural frequencies of the cracked plates. Some numerical results are given to demonstrate the accuracy and convergence of the obtained results. To demonstrate the efficiency of the method, the results were compared with finite element solutions and available literature. Also, effects of the crack depth, its location along the thickness, the length of the crack and different boundary conditions on the natural frequencies were investigated.