Design of Plates of Minimum Weight

Abstract

In this paper, the minimum weight design of plates made of rigid-plastic material has been studied under arbitrary boundary conditions. It has been proved that the total rate of dissipation is proportional to the weight in case of minimum weight design, and it has been obtained two nonlinear partial differential equations in terms of h and deflection rate w to find the surface of the plate. These equations are then solved exactly for an infinitely long plate and approximately for a square plate simply supported and subjected to uniform loading. Finally, using the advantages of these solutions, certain considerations have been introduced into the problem dealing with simply supported and uniformly loaded rectangular plates.