Fast Methods for Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Variable Stiffness Panels

This paper presents an approach for the nonlinear vibration analysis of Variable Stiffness (VS) plates based on Third-order Shear Deformation Theory (TSDT) along with a mixed variational formulation. The unknowns are expanded using the Ritz method, whilst time dependency is handled by referring to the Differential Quadrature (DQ) and the Harmonic Balance (HB) methods. The proposed framework guarantees reduced computational time, which is of particular interest when exploring the large design space offered by variable stiffness configurations. Validation against reference results is presented, as well as exemplary parametric studies illustrating the potential of the approach.