Vibration analysis of moderate-thick plates with slowly varying thickness (Q1082135)

In this paper, the flexural vibration analysis of moderate-thick rectangular plates with slowly varying thickness using a perturbation method is described, and the explicit expressions for free vibration frequencies for arbitrary thickness functions are derived. Finally, several numerical examples have been given and comparisons have been made with other proposed solution techniques. This comparison shows that the method yields very good results, so that this method may be regarded as an alternative effective method for the vibration and buckling analysis of plates and shells.