Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2009 (2009), Article ID 634362, 9 pages
doi:10.1155/2009/634362
Research Article

Free Vibration Analysis of Rectangular Orthotropic Membranes in Large Deflection

Zheng Zhou-Lian,1,2 Liu Chang-Jiang,1 He Xiao-Ting,1 and Chen Shan-Lin1

1Department of Civil Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400045, China
2Key Laboratory of the Three Gorges Reservoir Region’s Eco-Environment, Chongqing University, Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400045, China

Received 29 September 2008; Revised 11 January 2009; Accepted 3 February 2009

Academic Editor: José Roberto Castilho Piqueira

Copyright © 2009 Zheng Zhou-Lian et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper reviewed the research on the vibration of orthotropic membrane, which commonly applied in the membrane structural engineering. We applied the large deflection theory of membrane to derive the governing vibration equations of orthotropic membrane, solved it, and obtained the power series formula of nonlinear vibration frequency of rectangular membrane with four edges fixed. The paper gave the computational example and compared the two results from the large deflection theory and the small one, respectively. Results obtained from this paper provide some theoretical foundation for the measurement of pretension by frequency method; meanwhile, the results provide some theoretical foundation for the research of nonlinear vibration of membrane structures and the response solving of membrane structures under dynamic loads.