Vibration analysis of cracked FGM plates using higher-order shear deformation theory and extended isogeometric approach

A novel and effective formulation that combines the eXtended IsoGeometric Approach (XIGA) and higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT) is proposed to study the free vibration of cracked functionally graded material (FGM) plates. Herein, the general HSDT model with five unknown variables per node is applied for calculating the stiffness matrix without needing shear correction factor (SCF). In order to model the discontinuous and singular phenomena in the cracked plates, IsoGeometric Analysis (IGA) utilizing the Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) functions is incorporated with enrichment functions through the partition of unity method. NURBS basis functions with their inherent arbitrary high order smoothness permit the C1 requirement of the HSDT model. The material properties of the FGM plates vary continuously through the plate thickness according to an exponent function. The effects of gradient index, crack length, crack location, length to thickness on the natural frequencies and mode shapes of simply supported and clamped FGM plate are studied. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. The obtained results are in close comparison with other published solutions in the literature.