Free vibration of laminated composite skew plates with central cutouts

We performed a free vibration analysis of skew composite laminates with or without cutout based on the high-order shear deformation plate theory (HSDT). The effects of skew angles and ply orientations on the natural frequencies for various boundary conditions are studied using a nonlinear highorder finite element program developed for this study. The numerical results are in good agreement with those reported by other investigators for simple test cases, and the new results reported in this paper show the interactions between the skew angle, layup sequence and cutout size on the free vibration of the laminate. The findings highlight the importance of skew angles when analyzing laminated composite skew plates with cutout or without cutout.