FREE-VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF STIFFENED PLATES WITH ARBITRARY PLANFORM BY THE GENERAL SPLINE FINITE STRIP METHOD

The spline finite strip method which has long been applied to the vibration analysis of bare plate has been extended in this paper to stiffened plates having arbitrary shapes. Both concentrically and eccentrically stiffened plate have been analyzed. The main elegance of the formulation lies in the treatment of the stiffeners. The stiffeners can be placed anywhere within the plate strip, and need not be placed on the nodal lines. Stiffened plates having various shapes, boundary conditions and possessing various dispositions of stiffeners, as available in the literature, have been analyzed by the proposed approach. Comparison with published results indicates excellent agreement. © 1993 Academic Press Limited.