Vibration and acoustic response of a composite plate with inherent material damping in a thermal environment

This paper presents numerical studies on the vibration and acoustic response characteristics of a fiber-reinforced composite plate in a thermal environment by considering the inherent material damping property of the composite material. Initially the critical buckling temperature is obtained, followed by free and forced vibration analyses considering the pre-stress due to the imposed thermal environment. The vibration response predicted is then used to compute the sound radiation. The critical buckling temperature and vibration response are obtained using the finite element method based on the Classical Laminate Plate Theory (CLPT) while sound radiation characteristics are obtained using a coupled FEM/BEM technique. It is found that the vibration response of the structure reduces with an increase in uniform temperature rise for both Glass Epoxy and PEEK/IM7 materials, but the overall sound radiation of the plate reduces only marginally due to interaction between reduced stiffness and enhanced damping.