A NOVEL-APPROACH TO THE SOLUTION OF SHEAR FLEXIBLE RECTANGULAR-PLATESWITH ARBITRARY LAMINATIONS

A novel analytical solution to shear flexible rectangular plates with arbitrary laminations is presented. The deformation formulation of the plate characterized by the equivalent single layer theory that consid ers the effects of transverse shear deformations, suitable for moderat ely thick plates, results in highly coupled five second-order partial differential equations in five unknowns. A novel boundary continuous d ouble Fourier series solution approach has been developed to solve the se coupled equations in conjunction with the admissible boundary condi tions. The analytical results presented should serve as bench-marks fo r future comparisons of such popular approximate methods as finite ele ment, finite difference, Rayleigh-Ritz, Galerkin, and collocation meth ods.