Free vibration analysis of angle-ply laminated composite and soft core sandwich plates

In this work, a simple four-variable trigonometric shear deformation model with undetermined integral terms to consider the influences of transverse shear deformation is applied for the dynamic analysis of anti-symmetric laminated composite and soft core sandwich plates. Unlike the existing higher order theories, the current one contains only four unknowns. The equations of motion are obtained using the principle of virtual work. The analytical solution is determined by solving the eigenvalue problem. The influences of geometric ratio, modular ratio and fibre angle are critically evaluated for different problems of laminated composite and sandwich plates. The eigenfrequencies obtained using the current theory are verified by comparing the results with those of other theories and with the exact elasticity solution, if any.