Abstract
This study explores the effects of thermal stresses on the dynamic characteristics of composite cantilevered plates. The induced thermal stresses are determined by appealing to the principle of minimum strain energy, while the Raleigh-Ritz procedure is used to obtain the plate frequencies. Extensive numerical calculations have been carried out in order to gain quantitative understanding of how different choices of aspect ratios (AR) and temperature change intensities (T0) influence the natural frequencies of composite cantilevered plates. It has been shown that the first bending mode frequencies are unaffected by the induced stresses, while the first torsional mode frequencies decrease quite significantly with increasing values of T0, and therefore with increased magnitudes of the thermal stresses.
