Natural frequencies of thick plates made of orthotropic, monoclinic, and hexagonal materials by a meshless method

We use the first-order shear deformation theory and a meshless method based on radial basis functions in a pseudospectral framework for predicting the free vibration behavior of thick orthotropic, monoclinic and hexagonal plates. The shape parameter is obtained by an optimization procedure. The three translational and two rotational degrees of freedom of a point of the laminate are independently approximated. Through numerical experiments, the capability and efficiency of the radial basis functions—pseudospectral method for eigenvalue problems are demonstrated, and the numerical accuracy and convergence are examined.