The present paper investigates the free vibration analysis for functionally graded material plates of linearly varying thickness. A non-polynomial higher order shear deformation theory is used, which is based on inverse hyperbolic shape function for the tapered FGM plate. Three different types of material gradation laws, specifically: a power (P-FGM), exponential (E-FGM), and sigmoid law (S-FGM) are used to calculate the property variation in the thickness direction of FGM plate. The variational principle has been applied to derive the governing differential equation for the plates. Non-dimensional frequencies have been evaluated by considering the semi-analytical approach viz. Galerkin-Vlasov’s method. The accuracy of the preceding formulation has been validated through numerical examples consisting of constant thickness and tapered (variable thickness) plates. The findings obtained by this method are found to be in close agreement with the published results. Parametric studies are then explored for different geometric parameters like taper ratio and boundary conditions. It is deduced that the frequency parameter is maximum for S-FGM tapered plate as compared to E- and P-FGM tapered plate. Consequently, it is concluded that the S-FGM tapered plate is suitable for those engineering structures that are subjected to huge excitations to avoid resonance conditions. In addition, it is found that the taper ratio is significantly affected by the type of constraints on the edges of the tapered FGM plate. Some novel results for FGM plate with variable thickness are also computed that can be used as benchmark results for future reference.
