Bending of Elastically Restrained Rectangular Plates Under Uniform Pressure

In the bending and vibration of plates it is found that the values of maximum deflection and natural frequencies, respectively, vary considerably from the simply-supported to clamped edge conditions. For an estimation of these characteristics in the intermediate range a generalised boundary condition may be assumed, of which the simply-supported and clamped edges become limiting cases. While Bassali considers the ratio of edge moment to the cross-wise moment as a constant, Newmark, Lurie and Klein and other investigators, in their analyses of various structures, consider that moment and slope at an end are proportional. Here the definition of elastic restraint as given by Timoshenko, α=βM, is followed, where α is the slope at any edge, M the corresponding edge moment per unit length while β is the elastic restraint factor. β→0 and β→∞ represent the two limiting cases of simply-supported and clamped edge conditions.