Bending of thin rectangular plates with variable-thickness in a hygrothermal environment

This paper presents hygrothermomechanical bending analysis of variable-thickness thin rectangular plates. Two opposite edges of the present variable-thickness plate are clamped while the other opposite edges are simply supported. The present plate has varying thickness between its two edges and found in a hygrothermal environment. The exact analytical solutions are developed for the bending behavior of thin rectangular plates subjected to transverse uniformly distributed load. Numerical results are presented by using both Levy-type approach and the small parameter method. A validation example is employed with existing literature results. More reported and illustrated data for deflections, bending moments and bending stresses are investigated.