Abstract
The objective of this paper is to provide a computational method to analyze free vibrations of advanced composite plates in thermal environments according to a recently developed higher-order shear deformation theory. This method is based upon the assumptions that displacements field include just four unknowns and considers a combination of trigonometric and exponential shear shape functions which satisfy shear stress free boundary conditions on the plate surfaces. The FG plates are simply supported and subjected to uniform, linear, nonlinear and sinusoidal temperature rise. The temperature field considered is assumed to vary in the thickness direction and constant in the axial directions of plates. It is supposed that the constituent materials possess temperature-dependent properties changing across the thickness with a simple power law function. The equations of motion are obtained by employing Hamilton's principle and solved based on Navier's method to determine natural frequencies of the FG plate. A parametric study for FGM plates with different values of power law index and under different sets of thermal environmental conditions has been carried out. The obtained results are compared for temperature-dependent and temperature-independent FG Plates and validated with available results in the literature.