Analysis of Rectangular Plates by Stiffness Method

A procedure is derived for determining the stiffness coefficients at the midedges of a rectangular plate when the middle of any edge undergoes a unit displacement or a unit rotation. A Le'vy type of solution was suggested coupled to other trigonometric functions. The choice of such functions was a difficult task. The results obtained check satisfactorily with close-form solutions. However, the method proposed is more general and covers a wide range of boundary conditions and load types. The stiffness coefficients for different width-length ratios were tabulated in order to simplify the solution.