The present study proposes a simple and relatively complete displacement field, which, with the finite element formulation, can be employed in the analyses of the free vibration of circular and annular plates, the vibration with preloading in the radial direction, which is studied quite often, and the vibration with preloading under twisting, which has not yet appeared in the literature. The present results of the free vibration and the vibration under compressive stresses for circular and annular plates with different boundary conditions and various aspect ratios will be compared with those by ANSYS and other research. From the comparisons, we know that the present method does not need a fine mesh to get accurate natural frequencies of the plates. As to the vibration for the bar or tube with pretorsional loading, coupled vibration modes in the r-z plane and £c direction, it can be revealed by the present method, and the appearance of these vibration modes may be due to the coupling terms from the proposed displacement field. Also, these vibration modes have not been shown before.

The present study developes a mixed finite element formulation for the analysis of piezoelectric circular and annular plates. This formulation combines the conventional displacement-electric potential type variational principle and the piezoelectric Reissner`s principle with a weighting factor which represents ratio of weights imposed on the above two variational principles, and which can be adjusted by comparing with experiment results. With this formulation, stresses and electric displacements, like displacements and electric potential, are primary variables and are continuous across elements and element interfaces. Also, all displacement, stress, electric displacement, and electric potential boundary conditions can be easily and exactly imposed. Static deformations and vibration frequencies of some typical piezoelectric circular and annular plates are then obtained with the present approach and are compared with those by other methods. Based on experiment results in the literature, it is found that better results could be obtained in general by the present mixed finite element formulation than the others when 1 is chosen as the weighting factor.

In the proposed project¡Athe three - dimensional vibration of circular and annular plates is analyzed by a mixed finite element¡C Stresses¡Aas well as displacements¡A are primary variables in the mixed finite element formulation¡Atherefore¡Aall the stress and displacement boundary conditions can be imposed exactly¡CMeanwhile¡Athe proposed finite element is a modification of axisymmetric finite element which is based on three ¡V dimensional elasticity¡Aso general results of both axisymmetric and unaxisymmetric vibration of circular and annular plates can be obtained¡C Results of the present project will be compared to those by conventional displacement ¡V type finite element¡ARitz method and series method to show the difference among these theories¡CEspecially¡Athe effect of satisfying the stress boundary conditions on the unaxisymmetric vibration analyses can be demonstrated¡Awhich is not available in the literature up to date¡C

ABSTRACT In the present study, it is emphasized that mixed-type finite element formulation, which is different from the conventional displacement-type formulation, has both displacements and stresses as its primary variables. Therefore, stress, as well as displacement boundary conditions, can be imposed easily and exactly. Except around the outer edge where support is placed, stresses obtained by both displacement and mixed formulation are close to each other when the circular plate is subject to transverse uniform loading. However, large discrepancies exist around the locations of constraints, where the stresses are always significant and critical. Since mixed formulation of the present study can completely satisfy the stress and displacement boundary conditions, it can theoretically provide more accurate stress analysis and should be considered as a more appropriate analysis tool.

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Due to the complexity of electro-elastic coupling characteristics in piezoelectric material, some of the elastic, dielectric and piezoelectric parameters are difficult to be measured. Usually, these parameters are determined by assuming that all offer parameters are remained constant during the measurement. However, the interactive effect between material properties makes this assumption be not always true. In this study, the measured natural frequencies of the specified circular piezoelectric plate are used to extract these parameters simultaneously. In other words, all these parameters are determined with considering the interactive electro-elastic coupling effect. The analytic model of free-free circular piezoceramic plate was derived and solved to establish the relationship between natural frequencies and its material parameters, to cover most all the parameters, the out-of-plane(non-symmetric transverse) and in-plane(symmetric extensional) modes are considered. The genetic algorithm is employed to determine most all elastic, dielectric and piezoelectric parameters from a least square error between the calculated and measured natural frequencies. Numerical results derived from the parameters proposed in this work reveal a good agreement with the measured data. In other words, the proposed method to extract the piezoelectric parameters is feasible and effective.

Experimental observations indicate the presence of attached, gravity induced, horizontal buoyant currents above large area fires. Their driving mechanism is indirect and resembles the one observed above heated horizontal plates. Classic plume modelling is satisfactory for providing information for the flow far from the source. In dealing with large areas and directing attention to the flow close to the source, the classic plume theory should fail because the radial pressure gradient that is responsible for the driving of the flow is squeezed in the long and thin classic plume assumption. For this we propose a new plume structure for the description of the buoyant flow above a circular region of large radius L as “The flow field must be divided into three regions. A region where the flow is predominantly horizontal and attached to the surface, a transition region from horizontal to vertical where separation of the attached current takes place, and a region where vertical flow is established and classic plume theory can be applied”. A model for the description of the gross properties of the horizontal currents is developed under the term “horizontal plume”. The modified Richardson number for the horizontal plume a, being analogous to the radius of the large area, is studied asymptotically in the limit a → ∞ and second order uniformly valid semi-analytical solutions are obtained. The hot plate experiment was set up in order to test the model and facilitate its improvement. A chapter is dedicated to the data analysis coming from thermocouple readings and visualisation of the flow using particle image velocimetry.In the remainder of this thesis two classic problems of laminar natural convection are revisited. That of the first order laminar boundary layer above an isothermal circular plate of radius a and the first order laminar boundary layer above the semi- infinite plate inclined to horizontal. In both cases allowances to variable property effects were made through the introduction of a nondimensional parameter λT, with its value set to zero implying the assumption of the Boussinesq approximation. For the circular plate, fourth order series solutions were obtained valid at the edge of the plate where the effects of λT and Prandtl number Pr are studied. Furthermore a finite difference scheme for the numerical solution of the nonsimilar partial integro- differential equation was developed using the Keller Box method and compared with results obtained from the commercial finite element software COMSOL Multiphysics 3.5a. For the semi-infinite plate, fourth order series approximations valid at the edge of the plate were obtained, while an extensive analysis for the effect of λT, Pr and inclination parameter σ was performed on the flow. Positions of the separation points when the inclination is negative (σ < 0) as a function of Pr and λT were recovered.