Small-Deflection Plate Bending Theory

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action of the load acting on it irrespective of the neighboring rods. Let them now be tied together in a solid slab (plate). If we load only one rod, then, deecting, it will carry along the adjacent rods, applying to their faces those shear forces which we have designated here by Qx and Qy . These forces will cause rotation of the cross section, i.e., twisting of the rod. This approximation of a plate with a grillage of rods (or beams) is known as the grillage, or gridwork analogy [3]. 2.5 BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

As pointed out earlier, the boundary conditions are the known conditions on the surfaces of the plate which must be prescribed in advance in order to obtain the solution of Eq. (2.24) corresponding to a particular problem. Such conditions include the load px; y on the upper and lower faces of the plate; however, the load has been taken into account in the formulation of the general problem of bending of plates and it enters in the right-hand side of Eq. (2.24). It remains to clarify the conditions on the cylindrical surface, i.e., at the edges of the plate, depending on the fastening or supporting conditions. For a plate, the solution of Eq. (2.24) requires that two boundary conditions be satised at each edge. These may be a given deection and slope, or force and moment, or some combination of these. For the sake of simplicity, let us begin with the case of rectangular plate whose edges are parallel to the axes Ox and Oy. Figure 2.6 shows the rectangular plate one edge of which (y 0) is built-in, the edge x a is simply supported, the edge x 0 is supported by a beam, and the edge y b is free. We consider below all the above-mentioned boundary conditions: (1) Clamped, or built-in, or xed edge y 0 At the clamped edge y 0 the deection and slope are zero, i.e.,   @w 0 2:33 w 0jy0 and #y   : @y y0 (2) Simply supported edge x a At these edges the deection and bending moment Mx are both zero, i.e.,  !  @2 w @2 w   2:34 w 0jxa ; Mx D 0  :  @x2 @ y2
x a

The rst of these equations implies that along the edge x a all the derivatives w @2 w of w with respect to y are zero, i.e., if x a and w 0, then @ @y @y2 0. It follows that conditions expressed by Eqs (2.34) may appear in the following equivalent form:   @2 w  0 2:35 w 0jxa ;  : 2  @x
x a

(3) Free edge y b Suppose that the edge y b is perfectly free. Since no stresses act over this edge, then it is reasonable to equate all the stress resultants and stress couples occurring at points of this edge to zero, i.e.,