Effect of thermal gradient on vibration of non-homogeneous orthotropic trapezoidal plate of linearly varying thickness

In this paper, thermal effect on vibration of non-homogeneous orthotropic trapezoidal plate of linearly varying thickness is studied through a numerical method. Rayleigh Ritz method is used to evaluate the fundamental frequencies. The deflection function is defined by the product of the equations of the prescribed continuous piecewise boundary shape. Frequency corresponding to first two modes of vibration is calculated for the orthotropic trapezoidal plate having C–S–C–S edges for different values of thermal gradient, taper constant and aspect ratio. The proposed method is applied to solve orthotropic trapezoidal plate of variable thickness with C–S–C–S boundary conditions. Results are shown by figures for different values of thermal gradient, taper constant and aspect ratio for first two modes of vibrations.