Analysis of general quadrilateral orthotropic thick plates with arbitrary boundary conditions by the Rayleigh-Ritz method

A numerical method is developed for the analysis of general quadrilateral, moderately thick orthotropic plates having arbitrary boundary conditions. The procedure is based on the application of the Rayleigh– Ritz method in conjunction with the Reissner–Mindlin thick plate theory. A set of complete polynomials in terms of natural co-ordinates comprising of boundary and domain terms, which satisfy the boundary conditions, is deployed as the basic functions to approximate the real displacement eld. The generalized displacements and the eigenvalues are determined by imposing the principle of stationary potential energy. Although the procedure has the ability to solve problems involving thick quadrilateral plates, the numerical examples presented are mostly for skew plates. The results herein are compared with their counterparts determined by other investigators