Vibrations of rectangular plates reinforced by any number of beams of arbitrary lengths and placement angles

This paper presents an analytical method for the vibration analysis of plates reinforced by any number of beams of arbitrary lengths and placement angles. Both the plate and stiffening beams are generally modeled as three-dimensional (3-D) structures having six displacement components at a point, and the coupling at an interface is generically described by a set of distributed elastic springs. Each of the displacement functions is here invariably expressed as a modified Fourier series, which consists of a standard Fourier cosine series plus several supplementary series/functions used to ensure and improve uniform convergence of the series representation. Unlike most existing techniques, the current method offers a unified solution to the vibration problems for a wide spectrum of stiffened plates, regardless of their boundary conditions, coupling conditions, and reinforcement configurations. Several numerical examples are presented to validate the methodology and demonstrate the effect on modal parameters for a stiffened plate with various boundary conditions, coupling conditions, and reinforcement configurations.