Jiu Hui Wu

A. Q. Liu
School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering,
Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore 639798

H. L. Chen
Institute of Vibration and Noise Control,
Xian Jiaotong University,
Xian 710049, China

Exact Solutions for Free-Vibration

Analysis of Rectangular Plates
Using Bessel Functions
A novel Bessel function method is proposed to obtain the exact solutions for the freevibration analysis of rectangular thin plates with three edge conditions: (i) fully simply
supported; (ii) fully clamped, and (iii) two opposite edges simply supported and the other
two edges clamped. Because Bessel functions satisfy the biharmonic differential equation
of solid thin plate, the basic idea of the method is to superpose different Bessel functions
to satisfy the edge conditions such that the governing differential equation and the boundary conditions of the thin plate are exactly satisfied. It is shown that the proposed method
provides simple, direct, and highly accurate solutions for this family of problems. Examples are demonstrated by calculating the natural frequencies and the vibration modes
for a square plate with all edges simply supported and clamped.
DOI: 10.1115/1.2744043

Introduction

The free-vibration analysis of a rectangular plate is of interest

in the field of mechanics, civil, and aerospace engineering. Back
in 1823, by using a double trigonometric series, Navier obtained
the exact solution of bending of a rectangular plate with all edges
simply supported 1. In 1899, by using a single Fourier series,
Levy developed a method for solving the rectangular plate bending problems with two opposite edges simply supported and the
two remaining opposite edges with arbitrary conditions of supports 2. In 1934, Way obtained the exact solutions for the large
deflection analysis of a clamped circular plate 3. For the freevibration analysis of rectangular plates, accurate analytical results
were presented for the cases having two opposite sides simply
supported, whereas the other cases with the possible combinations
of clamped, simply supported, and free edge conditions were analyzed by using the Ritz method by Leissa in 1973 4. In addition,
the method of superposition was proposed by Gorman to examine
free-vibration analysis of cantilever plates in 1976 5 and that of
rectangular plates with a combination of clamped and simplysupported edge conditions in 1977 6.
More recently, many papers on the vibration analysis of rectangular plates have been published 710. The free-vibration analysis of isotropic and anisotropic rectangular thin plates subjected to
general boundary conditions was conducted by using a modified
Ritz method by Narita in 2000 10. For centuries, however, an
exact solution for a fully clamped rectangular plate has not yet
been obtained, and it is currently considered that an exact solution
is not achievable for the rectangular plate problem of this type.
In this paper, a Bessel function method is proposed to obtain an
exact solution for the vibration problems of a rectangular plate by
superposing different Bessel functions to satisfy three edge conditions: i fully simply supported, ii fully clamped, and iii two
opposite edges simply supported and the other two edges
clamped. By employing the proposed method, the exact solutions
of the natural frequencies and mode shapes can be obtained for
the rectangular thin plate with the aforementioned edge conditions. This new method provides simple, direct, and highly accurate solutions for this family of problems.
Contributed by the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME for publication in the
JOURNAL OF APPLIED MECHANICS. Manuscript received March 14, 2007; final manuscript received April 23, 2005. Review conducted by Oliver M. OReilly.

Journal of Applied Mechanics

Thin Plate Theory

The free harmonic vibration of a thin plate with a constant

thickness h is governed by the differential equation
D4W 2hW = 0

where Wx , y is a typical mode, 4 is the biharmonic differential

operator i.e., 4 = 22, 2 = 2 / x2 + 2 / y 2 in Cartesian coordinates, D = Eh3 / 121 2 is the bending rigidity with E and
being the Youngs modulus and the Poissons ratio, respectively,
is the natural frequency, and is the mass density.
For a finite solid circular plate, the nth vibration mode of Eq.
1 in polar coordinates is 11
Wnr, = AnJnkr + BnInkr

cos
sin

where An and Bn are constants to be determined, Jn and In are the

Bessel function and the modified Bessel function of the first kind
of order n, respectively, and k4 = 2h / D.
Thus, in Cartesian coordinates, Eq. 2 can be converted into
Wnx,y = AnJnkx2 + y 2 + BnInkx2 + y 2

cos
sin

n atan

y
x

3
According to 12, there exist the addition formulas,
JnR

cos
sin

n =

nmxJmy

m=

cos
sin

4a

4b

and

InR

cos
sin

n =

nmxImy

m=

cos
sin

where is defined as R cos = x y cos , R sin = y sin , and

when y approaches 0, approaches 0.
To satisfy = atany / x, = / 2 is selected. Then, Eq. 3
becomes

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Wnx,y =

A J

n nmkxJmky

+ BnInmkxImky

m=

cos
sin

m
2

5
Equation 5 is the general solution for the vibration modes of
solid rectangular plates, where An and Bn can be determined by
use of the orthogonal characteristic of these vibration modes. It is
noted that JnmkxJmky and InmkxImky are the core parts of
the solution, which can be further adopted to construct the freevibration solutions of a rectangular thin plate with different edge
conditions. By superposing these Bessel functions to satisfy the
edge conditions of a rectangular plate, the exact solution for the
free vibration can be obtained. We call this approach the Bessel
function method. It will be applied to analyze the free vibration of
a rectangular plate with three edge conditions in the sequel.

3 Free-Vibration Analysis of a Rectangular Plate Under Different Edge Conditions

For a rectangular plate with edge lengths a and b, there are
eight boundary conditions for every case. Three cases are discussed below: i fully simply supported, ii fully clamped, and
iii two opposite edges simply supported and the other two edges
clamped.
3.1 Fully Simply Supported Rectangular Plate. In this case,
the boundary conditions are
Wx=0 = 0,

Wy=0 = 0,

2W
x2

Wx=a = 0,

2W
y2

Wy=b = 0,

= 0,
x=0

= 0,
y=0

2W
x2

x=a

2W
y2

y=b

=0

= 0 6

det

Jnmka

Inmka

kb
Jm

kb
Im

=0

Equation 9 is the frequency equation for the fully simply supported square plate.
For a fully simply supported rectangular plate, the well-known
exact solution for the free-vibration analysis was obtained by
Navier 1. In the Navier-type solution, the mode functions and
natural frequencies are 4,13
Wm,n = Am,n sin

mx
n y
sin
,
a
b

k2 =

m,n = 1,2, . . .

m
a

n
b

10a

10b

The free-vibration solutions expressed in Eqs. 7 and 9 by the

proposed Bessel function method are different from the Naviertype solutions due to the different derivation processes. In the
former method, using the Bessel functions in Eq. 5 that satisfy
the governing equation 1, and Eq. 7 is constructed to satisfy
the edge conditions in Eq. 6. In the Navier-type solutions, the
double Fourier sine series in Eq. 10a was constructed to satisfy
the edge conditions, whereas Eq. 10b was obtained from Eq. 1.
Table 1 compares the first ten nondimensional natural frequencies
ka of a square plate with an edge length of a obtained from Eqs.
9 and 10b, applying the Bessel function method and the
Navier-type solution, respectively. It is noted that the two kinds of
solutions are different in the sense that the Navier-type natural
frequencies are relatively sparse. Because the frequency equations
are both derived exactly from the mode function expansions, considering the convergence of Eq. 7, the natural frequency solutions from Eq. 9 are exact and a complement to the Navier-type
solutions.
3.2 Fully Clamped Rectangular Plate. A fully clamped rectangular plate has the boundary conditions

In order to satisfy all the above edge conditions, the vibration

mode function can be constructed as
Wn,m = AnJnmkx + Jnmka xJmky + Jmkb y

Table 1 Comparison of the nondimensional natural frequencies using two different methods for a fully simply supported
square plate

+ BnInmkx + Inmka xImky

+ Imkb y sin

m
n
cos
2
2

7
Order

where the mode subscripts m and n are odd and even numbers for
nontrivial solutions, respectively. Based on the following properties of the special functions:
Jm0 = Im0 =

0 =
Jm

and

0 =
Im

1 m=0
0 m0

1
m=0
2
1
m= 2
4
0

8a

3.6744
6.2931
6.9380
8.7100
9.7066
10.1215
11.0385
12.2961
12.9751
13.2846

4.4429
7.0248
8.8858
9.9346
11.3272
12.9531
13.3286
14.0496
15.7080
17.7715

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Table 2 Comparison of the nondimensional natural frequencies using three different methods for a fully clamped square
plate
Order

8c

0 others

for the case of a = b, Eq. 7 satisfies all the edge conditions provided that m = n / 2 and
1248 / Vol. 74, NOVEMBER 2007

Navier-type solution
shown in Eq. 10b

8b

others

1
m=0
2
1
m= 2
4

Present theory
in Eq. 9

1
2
3
4
5
6

Present theory
in Eq. 14

Rayleigh-Ritz
method 14

Finite element method

15

5.9057
8.3466
9.1969
10.6870
11.8367
12.4022

5.9992
8.5680
10.4053
11.4734
11.5000
12.8511

5.9540
8.4870
10.1833
11.3759
11.4140

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Fig. 1 Vibration mode functions with n = 2 and m = 1 for a fully simply supported plate at different nondimensional natural frequencies: a ka = 3.6744
and b ka = 10.1215

Wx=0 = 0,
Wy=0 = 0,

Wx=a = 0,
Wy=b = 0,

W
x

x=0

W
y

y=0

= 0,

= 0,

W
x

x=a

W
y

y=b

=0

=0
11

the discrepancy among them is 3%. It is also known that the

results obtained by the Rayleigh-Ritz method constitute upper
bounds for the natural frequencies. As shown in Table 2, the first
six natural frequencies from the Rayleigh-Ritz method are almost
all higher than the first six exact eigenfrequencies from Eq. 14.
Therefore, the frequency equation of the Bessel function method
for the fully clamped plate is verified.

The vibration mode function in this case can be constructed as

Wn,m = AnJnmkx + Jnmka xJmky + Jmkb y
+ BnInmkx + Inmka xImky
m
n
cos
2
2

3.3 Rectangular Plate With Two Opposite Edges Simply

Supported and the Other Two Edges Clamped. The rectangular
plate in this case has the boundary conditions

12

Wx=0 = 0,

where m and n are even numbers. For the fully clamped square
plate a = b, since

Wy=0 = 0,

+ Imkb y cos

0 =
Jm

1
m=1
2
1
m=1
2
0

13

Inmka

kb
Jm

kb
Im

=0

14

Equation 14 is the frequency equation for the fully clamped

plate.
In order to verify Eq. 14, we compared the nondimensional
frequencies ka of the fully clamped square plate obtained from
Eq. 14, the Rayleigh-Ritz method 14, and the finite element
method 15. The comparison is summarized in Table 2. As shown
in Table 2, the first two natural frequencies derived from Eq. 14
employing the Bessel function method are very close to those
from the Rayleigh-Ritz method and the finite element method, and
Journal of Applied Mechanics

W
y

Wy=b = 0,

= 0,

x=0

= 0,
y=0

2W
x2

x=a

W
y

y=b

=0

=0

The vibration mode function in this case can be constructed from

Wn,m = AnJnmkx + Jnmka x Jnmka Jnm0
Jmky + Jmkb y Jmkb Jm0 + BnInmkx

others

Jnmka

2W
x2

15

all the above conditions can be satisfied with m = n / 2, m 0, and

det

Wx=a = 0,

+ Inmka x Inmka Inm0Imky + Imkb y

Imkb Im0 exp

mi
2

16

where n is an even number. For the case of a = b, all the boundary

conditions are satisfied when m = n / 2, m 0 , 1 , 2, and
det

ka
Jnm

ka
Inm

kb
Jm

kb
Im

=0

17

Equation 17 represents the frequency equation for this case.

Therefore, the vibration mode functions and frequency equations of the rectangular plate with different edge conditions:
i fully simply supported, ii fully clamped, and iii two oppoNOVEMBER 2007, Vol. 74 / 1249

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Fig. 2 Vibration mode functions with n = 6 and m = 3 for a fully simply supported plate at different nondimensional natural frequencies: a ka = 9.7066
and b ka = 12.9751

site edges simply supported and the other two edges clamped,
have been derived as Eqs. 7 and 9, Eqs. 12 and 14, and Eqs.
16 and 17, respectively. Based on the derived equations above,
the modes shapes and natural frequencies can be obtained.

Numerical Illustrations

In this section, the different vibration mode functions of the

square plate with two different edge conditions: i fully simply

Fig. 3 Vibration mode functions with n = 4 and m = 2 for a fully clamped square
plate at different nondimensional natural frequencies: a ka = 12.4022 and b
ka = 15.5795

1250 / Vol. 74, NOVEMBER 2007

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supported and ii fully clamped, are calculated with an edge

length of a = 0.18 m. Figures 1a and 1b show the vibration
mode functions distribution and the corresponding contours for a
fully simply supported rectangular plate with n = 2 and m = 1 at a
nondimensional natural frequency of 3.6744 and 10.1215, respectively. As shown in Fig. 1a, it can be seen that, at the lowest
natural frequency ka = 3.6744, the boundary conditions in Eq. 6
are satisfied from the mode distribution and Eq. 7 is validated. In
the contour shown at the right-hand side, the only one peak is
observed at the center of the square plate. In Fig. 1b, it is observed that the number of peaks increases as the order of the
vibration mode becomes higher. The corresponding contour at the
right-hand side shows the distribution of the peaks on the plate
under investigation. Figures 2a and 2b show the vibration
mode functions distribution and the corresponding contours for a
fully simply supported rectangular plate with n = 6 and m = 3 at a
nondimensional natural frequency of 9.7066 and 12.9751, respectively. As shown in Fig. 2, when n and m vary, the boundary
conditions in Eq. 6 are also satisfied and Eq. 7 is validated.
Figures 3a and 3b show the vibration mode functions and the
corresponding contours for a fully clamped rectangular plate with
n = 4 and m = 2 at a nondimensional natural frequency of 12.4022
and 15.5795, respectively. As can be seen in Fig.3, the boundary
conditions are satisfied by employing the Bessel function method
and the derived equations are validated.

Conclusions

A novel Bessel function method is presented and used to obtain

the exact solutions for the free-vibration analysis of a rectangular
plate with three different edge conditions: i fully simply supported, ii fully clamped, and iii two opposite edges simply
supported and the other two edges clamped. This proposed
method provides the exact solutions for the natural frequencies
and mode shapes of a rectangular plate. Because of the high accuracy provided by the proposed method, it can be used to verify
other free-vibration analyses and to evaluate the precision of commercial software. The direct exact solutions obtained for the most

Journal of Applied Mechanics

fundamental structural element employing the proposed method

will serve as a base of and provide an insight into the analysis of
complex structures.

Acknowledgment
The authors would express our great gratitude to Professor
Oliver M. OReilly, Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied
Mechanics, and the anonymous reviewers for their useful
suggestions.

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