Copyright © 2010 Y. F. Zheng and L. Q. Deng. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The nonlinear free vibration for viscoelastic cross-ply moderately thick laminated composite plates under considering transverse shear deformation and damage effect is investigated. Based on the Timoshenko-Mindlin theory, strain-equivalence hypothesis, and Boltzmann superposition principle, the nonlinear free vibration governing equations for viscoelastic moderately thick laminated plates with damage are established and solved by the Galerkin method, Simpson integration, Newton-Cotes, Newmark, and iterative methods. In the numerical results, the effects of transverse shear, material viscoelasticity, span-thickness ratio, aspect ratio, and damage effect on the nonlinear free vibrating frequency of the viscoelastic cross-ply moderately thick laminated plates are discussed.