On dynamic behavior of composite plates using a higher-order Zig-Zag theory and exponential basis functions

In this paper, a boundary node method is presented to study wave propagation in laminated composite plates. The Zig-Zag theory of Cho and Parmerter is used for deriving the governing equations of laminated plates. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first one employing the theory in non-stationary dynamic plate problems addressing wave propagation issues. For this theory, there is no information about the Green’s functions and thus the presented method can be considered as an alternative to the boundary integral method. With the use of exponential basis functions (EBFs), the response of the structure is first found in the frequency domain and finally the time-domain response is obtained using inverse Fourier transformation. The EBFs are found so that they satisfy the governing equations in the frequency domain. For the first time, in this paper, we shall present explicit relations for the EBFs in the frequency domain for Cho and Parmerter’s Zig-Zag theory. The coefficients of the EBFs are found through the collocation of the boundary conditions. The dynamic analysis of some composite laminated plates is presented, and the results are compared to those obtained from the dynamic analysis of two-/three-dimensional finite element method (FEM). We shall discuss the capabilities and limitations of the theory and the solution method. The capability of the method, in the analysis of problems excited by high-frequency loads, is shown in the solution of wave propagation problems for which the FEM needs excessive number of elements and thus it is practically impossible to be applied.