Unified approach for vibration analyses of annular sector and annular plates with general boundary conditions

This paper presents a unified approach for predicting the free and forced (steady-state and transient) vibration analyses of annular sector and annular plates with various combinations of classical and non-classical boundary supports. In spite of the types of the boundary restraints and the shapes of the plates, the admissible displacement function is described as a modified trigonometric series expansion, and four sine terms are introduced to overcome all the relevant discontinuities or jumps of elastic boundary conditions. Mathematically, the unification of various boundary value problems for annular sector and annular plates is physically realized by setting a set of coupling springs to ensure appropriate continuity conditions along the radial edges of concern. Numerous examples are presented for the free vibration analyses of annular sector and annular plates with different boundary restraints. With regard to the forced vibration analysis, annular sector and annular plates with different external excitations are examined. The accuracy, convergence and numerical robustness of the current approach are extensively demonstrated and verified through numerical examples which involve plates with various shapes and boundary conditions.