This paper presents the free vibration analysis of stiffened isotropic plate by means of finite element method. Stiffeners are used in plates to increase the strength and stiffness. The effect of position of stiffeners on isotropic plate has been studied which involve the possible combination of clamped and free edge condition. The model has been discretized using a 20-node solid element (SOLID186) from the ANSYS element library. The natural frequencies are calculated using Block-Lanczos algorithm. The comparisons of stiffened plate with the available results are found to be in good uniformity. The effect of different boundary conditions, stiffeners location, thickness ratio, stiffener thickness to plate thickness and aspect ratio on the vibration analysis of stiffened plates has been studied.

Finite element method is used to study the free vibration analysis of functionally graded skew plates. The material properties of the skew plates are assumed to vary continuously through their thickness according to a power-law distribution of the volume fractions of the plate constituents. The first order shear deformation theory is used to incorporate the effects of transverse shear deformation and rotary inertia. Convergence study with respect to the number of nodes has been carried out and the results are compared with those from past investigations available in the literature. Two types of functionally graded skew plates - Al/ZrO2 and Al/Al2O3 are considered in this study and the effects of the volume fraction, different external boundary conditions and thickness ratio on the natural frequencies are studied in detail.