Free Vibration Analysis of a Rotating Laminated Fibrous Composite Satellite Panel

In this paper, free vibration analysis of rotating laminated composite satellite panels is investigated. The classical laminated plate theory (CLPT) is applied for panel modeling, and numerical results are obtained by the finite element method using a four-node plate element with five degrees of freedom at each node. Kane dynamic method is employed for the derivation of linear governing equations of motion, which include Coriolis effects. A program based on Matlab is used for this purpose. The effects of different parameters including length/width ratio, number of layers, fiber orientation angles, rotation speed on dimensionless natural frequencies are investigated and discussed in the paper. To check the validity, the obtained results are compared with those available in the literature, wherever possible