Vibration of anti-symmetric angle-ply composite plates under random excitation

Purpose - The transverse shear deformation and rotary inertia effects need to be included for an accurate analysis in the response of the relatively thick plates. This paper seeks to use, one of the refined theories which takes into account those effects, The First Order Shear Deformation Theory, to obtain linear and non-linear responses for anti-symmetric angle-ply composite plates under random excitation. Design/methodology/approach - The random excitation is assumed to be stationary, ergodic and Gaussian with zero-mean. A Monte Carlo Simulation of stationary random process is used. A multi-mode Galerkin approach and numerical integration procedure are employed to find linear and non-linear response solutions. Laminated composite plate is taken to be simply-supported along four edges. Findings - The vibration of composite plates at elevated temperatures is also investigated. The linear and non-linear deflections root-mean-square (RMS) are obtained for various input levels, the different lamination angles and the number of layers. Practical implications - Further, case studies might lead to a lighter design of thick panels used in high-performance systems such as aerospace structures. Originality/value - The paper provides information on the linear and more realistic non-linear vibrations of thick composite plates in time domain so that it would be possible to obtain key statistical information directly from time-response history.