Free Vibration Analysis of Rectangular Plates with Nonuniform Lateral Elastic Edge Support

The method of superposition is utilized to obtain a solution for the free vibration of thin rectangular plates resting on non-uniform lateral elastic edge supports. The stiffness of the elastic supports may have any desired distribution along the edges, including discontinuities and local concentrations. Convergence is found to be rapid. Graphical results are plotted for square plates in order to verify that proper frequency limits are approached as the edge stiffness approach limits of zero and infinity. Results are tabulated for square and nonsquare plates in order that other researchers will have data against which they can compare their results.