A NEW BOUNDARY INTEGRAL-EQUATION FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD FOR CLAMPED ORTHOTROPIC PLATE BENDING PROBLEMS

In this paper, a simplified boundary integral equation-finite-element method is proposed for the bending analysis of thin clamped orthotropic plates according to Kirchhoff's theory. The solution procedure is based on the direct boundary element method earlier developed for isotropic plate bending problems. The integral equations necessary for solving the orthotropic plate bending problem are derived after transformation of such a problem into an equivalent isotropic plate bending problem by introducing an unknown transverse loading distributed in the interior domain of the plate. A simple discretization scheme is described in this paper for the plate boundary and its interior domain. Some computational examples are presented in this paper, and the numerical results illustrate a satisfactory accuracy of the method.