Despite their advantageous properties such as high stiffness-to-weight ratio, fiber-reinforced laminates are prone to certain drawbacks. Due to its nonuniform structure, the material can suffer from additional failure types such as fiber-matrix debonding or delamination [1]. In addition, laminate manufacturing typically involves many steps such as fiber production, lamination, resin infusion, and curing. This series of operations lengthens the production process and increases expenses [2]. There are also certain design problems, where the ideal laminate consists of infinitely many layers (e.g., optimal laminate for the maximum fundamental frequency [3]), which is not feasible in practice. This study aims to introduce novel laminate-like functionally graded composites to overcome the mentioned deficiencies of fiber-reinforced composites. This new type of composite architecture can be produced using functionally graded materials with specific patterns. Similar to the principle employed in a previous study [4], the stiffer and heavier material provides the primary load-carrying function, while the lighter and softer material facilitates reducing the weight. The resulting composite has similarities with conventional laminates but provides significant advantages including improved machinability, suitability for additive manufacturing, and superior damage resistance and stiffness properties due to unitary structure. To demonstrate the feasibility of the concept, finite element analyses are performed to compute the free vibration responses for the proposed graded composites and analogous conventional laminates. The comparison of the results indicates that the shown periodical grading approach is promising for achieving alternative laminate-like composites with favorable properties. The case studies also constitute a guideline about the required spatial grading frequencies to achieve sufficient structural uniformity. REFERENCES [1] B. Park, et al. Visualization of hidden delamination and debonding in composites through noncontact laser ultrasonic scanning. doi: 10.1016/j.compscitech.2014.05.029 [2] N. Jauhari, et al. Natural fibre reinforced composite laminates–a review. doi: 10.1016/j.matpr.2015.07.304 [3] H. Fukunaga, et al. Optimal design of symmetric laminated plates for fundamental frequency. doi: 10.1006/jsvi.1994.1115 [4] G. Serhat. Design of in-plane and thickness-wise functionally graded shells. doi: 10.1115/SSDM2023-107956