Numerical analysis of thick plates

Bending behaviour of a rectangular plate is analysed with the help of a refined higher order theory. The theory is based on a higher order displacement model and the three-dimensional Hooke's laws for plate material, giving rise to a more realistic quadratic variation of the transverse shearing strains and linear variation of the transverse normal strain through the plate thickness. It is shown that the segmentation method for the numerical analysis of plates simply supported on two opposite edges can be considered to be the most competitive method in terms of efficiency, economy, reliability and accuracy in such applications