Abstract

The fundamental frequencies of plate are important for engineering designs. Freevibration characteristics of isotropic rectangular plates with point, spring and viscoelastic supports have been studied by several researchers. However, the practical implementation of these boundary conditions in application is not at all trivial. In this study, the effects of the size of the support hole area on the fundamental frequencies ofthe plate have been analyzed numerically and experimentally. The process involves numerical modeling using finite elements and ANSYS software is used for the analysis of plates. It has advantages such as simplicity in use, applicability to various boundary conditions which solution is not available analytically. The convergence analysis and the analysis for comparison purposes are carried out for the elastic and point supported boundary conditions. For the rigid point supported plate with the specified size of the support area, the experimental study has been conducted and its results compared with the numerical results. The results show  that the effects of support size might  be considered in engineering vibration analysis of point supported plates.

Key words: Plate, natural frequency, modal analysis, point support, support area.