In-plane vibrations of a rectangular plate: plane wave expansion modelling and experiment

Abstract: Theoretical and experimental results for in-plane vibrations of a uniform rectangular plate with free boundary conditions are obtained. The experimental setup uses electromagnetic-acoustic transducers and a vector network analyzer. The theoretical calculations were obtained using the plane wave expansion method applied to the in-plane thin plate vibration theory. The agreement between theory and experiment is excellent for the lower 95 modes covering a very wide frequency range from DC to 20 kHz. Some measured normal-mode wave amplitudes were compared with the theoretical predictions; very good agreement was observed. The excellent agreement of the classical theory of in-plane vibrations confirms its reliability up to very high frequencies.