Dynamic equations for a fully anisotropic elastic plate

A hierarchy of dynamic plate equations is derived for a fully anisotropic elastic plate. Using power series expansions in the thickness coordinate for the displacement components, recursion relations are obtained among the expansion functions. Adopting these in the boundary conditions on the plate surfaces and along the edges, a set of dynamic equations with pertinent edge boundary conditions are derived on implicit form. These can be truncated to any order and are believed to be asymptotically correct. For the special case of an orthotropic plate, explicit plate equations are presented and compared analytically and numerically to other approximate theories given in the literature. These results show that the present theory capture the plate behavior accurately concerning dispersion curves, eigenfrequencies as well as stress and displacement distributions.