A numerical method for laterally loaded thin plates

Abstract

A numerical method for dealing with laterally loaded thin plates is presented and compared to the similar but more basic numerical technique used in [1, 2]. This method considers the plate to be embedded in the infinite plane and uses point load sources external to the plate boundary to satisfy boundary conditions as in collocation. The exact solution for a constant lateral load acting over an arbitrary polygon in the infinite plane is first derived and then used to couple the effects of lateral loading to the collocation method described above. The results show that less than half the number of collocation points used in [1, 2] is needed for the same accuracy and that the computer execution time is reduced several hundred times. This method is not limited to particular plate shapes, boundary condition types or load distributions. Five examples are used to illustrate the method.