ANALYSIS OF CLAMPED RECTANGULAR ORTHOTROPIC PLATES SUBJECTED TO A UNIFORM LATERAL LOAD

The increasing use of composite materials for plate-type structures in tensified the need for solutions of orthotropic plates. One problem of interest is the clamped rectangular plate with reinforcing fibers par allel to the plate boundaries. There is no exact analytical solution f or this problem. The purpose of this paper was to derive a closed-form approximate solution of high accuracy, even for third derivatives (sh earing forces). This was achieved by utilizing the extended Kantorovic h method. It was found that the convergence of this procedure is very rapid, in that the final form is reached after only four iterations, a nd that the final form of the generated solution is independent of the initial choice. To establish the accuracy of this solution, it was nu merically evaluated for a plate made of Kevlar 49 Epoxy, and the resul ts obtained were compared with the corresponding results by Whitney [S tructural Analysis of laminated Anisotropic Plates. Technomic, Lancast er; Pennsylvania (1987)], as well as with the exact solution for a cla mped infinite strip. It was found that with increasing plate aspect ra tios, the deflections and bending moments generated approached closely those of the infinite strip, but those of Whitney did not.