A meshfree method for transverse vibrations of anisotropic plates

A meshfree approach, called displacement boundary method, for anisotropic Kirchhoff plate dynamic analysis is presented. This method is deduced from a variational principle, which uses a modified hybrid functional involving the generalized displacements and generalized tractions on the boundary and the lateral deflection in the domain as independent variables. The discretization process is based on the employment of the fundamental solutions of the static problem operator for the expression of the variables involved in the functional. The stiffness and mass matrices obtained for the dynamic model are frequency-independent, symmetric and positive definite and their computation involves boundary integrals of regular kernels only. Due to its features, the final resolving system can be solved with the classical approaches by using standard numerical procedures. To assess the formulation, the free vibrations of some anisotropic plates were calculated and the results compared with those obtained using other solution techniques. The present results are in good agreement with those found in the literature showing the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed approach.