Free vibration analysis of rectangular sandwich plates with compressible core and various boundary conditions

Extended higher-order sandwich plate theory is used to analyze the free vibrations of rectangular sandwich plates with compressible core. Accordingly, first-order shear deformation theory is used to model the laminated face sheets. Besides, the in-plane and transverse displacements of the core are assumed to be cubic and quadratic functions of the thickness coordinate, respectively. To deduce the governing equations, Hamilton’s principle is used. Then, based on the Rayleigh-Ritz method, single series expansions with two-variable orthogonal polynomials – namely, the orthogonal plate functions – are considered to approximate the displacement components. Lastly, a generalized eigenvalue problem is solved to obtain the free vibrational characteristics of sandwich plates with both symmetric and anti-symmetric lay-ups subjected to various boundary conditions. The method is validated against the results obtained by different methods in the literature. Finally, the effects of the plate side-to-thickness ratio, in-plane aspect ratio, and core-to-face sheets thickness ratio on the natural frequencies are discussed.