Bending of orthotropic rectangular thin plates with two opposite edges clamped

Abstract

This work presents integral transform solutions of the bending problem of orthotropic rectangular thin plates with constant thickness, subject to five sets of boundary conditions: (a) fully clamped; (b) three edges clamped and one edge simply supported; (c) three edges clamped and one edge free; (d) two opposite edges clamped, one edge simply supported, and one edge free; and (e) two opposite edges clamped and two edges free. By adopting eigenfunctions of Euler–Bernoulli beams with corresponding boundary conditions for each direction of the plate, the governing fourth-order partial differential equation is integral transformed into a system of linear algebraic equations. Boundary conditions at the free edges are treated exactly by carrying out integral transform in the boundary formulations, which are incorporated in the transformed governing equations by integration by parts. The numerical difficulties with the high-order beam functions are overcome by using modified exponential forms, thus limiting the eigenfunctions to the range between −2 and 2. Analytical integration forms are used for the integrals of the coefficients of the transformed equations, further avoiding numerical difficulties with large high-order eigenvalues. The accuracy and convergence of the solutions are shown through numerical examples in comparison with available solutions in the literature and with finite element solutions obtained by using Abaqus program.