Table of Contents

1. Introduction.- 1.1 Substructure techniques in the dynamics of large flexible structures.- 1.2 Remarks on the mechanical impedance and on the dynamic stiffness of elastic systems.- 2. General considerations on the mechanical impedance and on the dynamic stiffness of plates.- 2.1 The classical plate theory.- 2.2 Plate impedances and the reduced multipoint impedance matrix.- 2.3 Singularities in Kirchhoff plates.- 2.4 Literature survey on plate vibrations.- 3. Dynamic stiffness of rectangular plates.- 3.1 Symmetric and antisymmetric vibrations.- 3.2 The method of superposition.- 3.3 Plate connected at center.- 3.4 Plate connected at a point on a line of symmetry.- 3.5 Plate connected at an arbitrary point.- 3.6 On the reduced multipoint stiffness and impedance matrices.- 3.7 Comparison with experiments.- 3.8 Conclusions.- 4. Final remarks.- 5. Literature.