The effect of added point masses on the geometrically non-linear vibrations of SCSC rectangular plates

A point mass added to a plate may have a significant effect on its linear and nonlinear dynamics, including frequencies, mode shapes and the forced response to external loading. In the present paper, a simply supported clamped simply supported clamped rectangular plate (SCSCRP) carrying a point mass is examined. The expressions for the kinetic, linear and non-linear strain energies are derived by taking into account the effect of the added mass on the kinetic energy and the effect of the membrane forces induced by the non-linearity on the strain energy. The discretization of these expressions makes the mass tensor, the linear and non-linear rigidity tensors appear in a non-linear algebraic multimode amplitude equation, the iterative solution of which permit to obtain, in the neighborhood of the first non-linear mode, the basic SCSCRP function amplitude dependent contribution coefficients. Nonlinear frequency response functions have been obtained for the first time, based on an iterative numerical solution in each case of the associated complete set of nonlinear algebraic equations. Such new results are useful for a better qualitative understanding allowing an optimal dynamic design of the rectangular plates with added masses.