A four-node quadrilateral element for vibration and damping analysis of sandwich plates with viscoelastic core

Constrained layer damping treatments have been widely used as an effective way for vibration control and noise reduction of thin-walled plates and shells. Despite extensive application in vibration and damping analysis of sandwich plates with viscoelastic core, the rectangular element is challenged by irregular structural forms in practical engineering. In this paper, a three-layer four-node quadrilateral element with seven degrees of freedom at each node is presented. Compared with classical rectangular element, the four-node quadrilateral element has stronger adaptability in complex structural forms and boundary conditions. Based on the layer-wise theory where the constrained layer and the base layer meet Kirchhoff theory and the viscoelastic layer satisfies first-order shear deformation theory, the finite element formulation of the sandwich plate with viscoelastic core is derived by the Hamilton principle in variational form and based on the generalization of the discrete Kirchhoff Quadrilateral plate element. The complex modulus model is employed to describe the viscoelastic core of sandwich plates, allowing for the material’s frequency dependent characteristics. The natural frequencies and associated modal loss factors are computed based on the complex eigenvalue problems. The frequency dependent characteristic of the viscoelastic core is considered and an iterative procedure is introduced to solve the nonlinear eigenvalue problem. At last, six verification numerical examples that include three sandwich beam-plates and three sandwich plates are provided to compare present method with experiment, analytical method, Galerkin method, finite element methods and commercial software (NASTRAN). The results show that the proposed finite element can accurately and efficiently simulate the sandwich plates treated with constrained layer damping with a variety of structural forms and boundary conditions.