Load's temporal characteristics for annulling forced vibrations of linear elastic plates

We consider trapezoidal load-time pulses with linearly increasing and affinely decreasing durations equal to integer multiples of the time period of the first bending mode of vibration of a linearly elastic structure. For arbitrary spatial distributions of loads applied to monolithic and laminated orthotropic plates, it is shown through numerical solutions that plates' vibrations become miniscule after the load is removed. This phenomenon is independent of the dwell time (i.e., the time duration between the rising and the falling portions) during which the load is kept constant. The primary reason for this response is that for such time-dependent loads, nearly all of plate's strain energy is concentrated in deformations corresponding to the fundamental bending mode of vibration. Thus plate's deformations can be studied by taking the mode shape of the 1st bending mode as the basis function and reducing the problem to that of solving a single second-order ordinary differential equation. We have verified this postulate by comparing strain energies computed from the 3-dimensional deformations of different plate geometries and boundary conditions with those determined by using the single degree of freedom (DoF) model. Thus for trapezoidal time-dependent loads applied on plates, the 1 DoF model provides reasonably accurate results and saves considerable computational effort.