A STRIP ELEMENT METHOD FOR BENDING ANALYSIS OF ORTHOTROPIC PLATES

A strip element method is presented to determine bending solutions of orthotropic plates. In this method, the plate is discretized into stri p elements in one direction. By using the principle of minimum potenti al energy to a strip element, a set of fourth-order ordinary different ial equations with respect to the other direction are derived. By asse mbling the corresponding equations of adjacent strip elements, differe ntial equations for the whole plate are obtained. These equations can be solved analytically by using the Fourier transform method. The defl ection distribution is determined by using the boundary conditions. Nu merical examples for an orthotropic plate are presented and it is show n that the strip element method is an efficient and accurate numerical method for the plate bending analysis.