Effect of Thermal Gradient on Vibration of Visco-Elastic Plate with Thickness Variation

Visco- Elastic Plates are being increasingly used in the aeronautical and aerospace industry as well as in other fields of modern technology. Plates with variable thickness are of great importance in a wide variety of engineering applications i.e. nuclear reactor, aeronautical field, naval structure, submarine, earth-quake resistors etc. The analysis is presented here is to study the two dimensional thermal effect on vibration of visco-elastic square plate of variable thickness. Temperature & thickness both vary linearly in one direction and parabolically in another direction. A frequency equation is derived by using Rayleigh-Ritz technique with a two-term deflection function. Both the modes of the frequency are calculated by the latest computational technique, MATLAB, for the various values of taper parameters and temperature gradient.