Identification Problems for Vibrating Composite Plates

This paper addresses an inverse vibration problem for cantilever composite plates. A two-step procedure is proposed to estimate the elastic properties of the material. First, simple formulas are used to provide an initial estimate given experimentally determined natural frequencies. A very accurate Rayleigh-Ritz model is then used to refine these estimates and obtain good agreement between predictions and experimental values. Imperfect support conditions at the root affect the dynamics of the plate significantly. Neglecting this effect leads to unrealistic estimates of the material properties. A procedure to identify the stiffness of the supports is presented and demonstrated on several examples.