Abstract
A novel polygonal Fourier spectral plate element was developed using the Rayleigh–Ritz method in this paper. Better than plate elements of traditional spectral element method (SEM), it can be any polygon shape with embed stiffeners and holes. Several case studies, including vibration characteristics analysis of a plate, a plate with hole, a plate with stiffener and an arbitrary shape car side plate, were carried out to test the useability and accuracy of the new element. Compared with results using finite element method (FEM) and traditional SEM, the new element can achieve similar accuracy with a faster computational speed. It can be 10% faster than FEM and 10 times faster than traditional SEM for some cases, and even more if the plate shape is more complicated. This is because the new element uses less elements and couplings than traditional SEM. As part of the SEM family, it also inherited the advantage of smaller system matrix size with less degree of freedoms than FEM. Therefore, it can be a better option for analyzing plate structure vibration characteristics in the middle frequency band gap left by FEM and statistical energy analysis, and can extend the application of SEM significantly.
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