Nonlinear axisymmetric static and transient analysis of orthotropic thin tapered annular plates

Abstract

This paper considers the geometrically nonlinear axisymmetric static and transient responses of cylindrically orthotropic thin tapered annular plates subjected to uniformly distributed and ring loads. Immovable clamped and simply supported annular tapered plates with and without a rigid plug subjected to static and step function loads have been analysed. Orthogonal point collocation method and Newmark-β scheme have been employed to solve nonlinear governing differential equations expressed in terms of transverse displacement ω and stress function Ψ. Results have been presented for isotropic and orthotropic annular tapered plates with linear variation of thickness for two annular ratios and three taper ratios, and the effect of varying thickness has been investigated. A simple approximate method has been used to predict the maximum dynamic response to step loads from the results for static loads. This method gives sufficiently accurate results for engineering applications.