Accurate vibration analysis of multilayered plates made of functionally graded materials

Closed form solutions of free vibration problems in simply supported multilayered plates made of Functionally Graded Material (FGM) are dealt with in the present paper. Various refined plate theories are compared in the cases of both equivalent single-layer and layer-wise variable descriptions. Classical theories are compared to advanced ones, in which higher orders of expansion in the thickness direction are used for the transverse displacement. The plate governing equations are provided by applying Carrera's Unified Formulation (CUF) which, in this paper, is extended to the dynamics and free vibration response of plates embedding FGM layers. CUF permits one to handle the governing equations of the whole theory in a unified manner and a hierarchical evaluation of the natural frequencies of plates is therefore obtained. The results are given for one-layer and multi-layer plates embedding FGM layers. Conclusions are drawn regarding the accuracy of classical and advanced plate modelling for various vibration modes. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.