Rayleigh-Ritz solution for simply supported thick orthotropic plates

This paper presents solution for simply supported, rectangular, thick, orthotropic plates using Rayleigh-Ritz approach. Higher order shear deformation displacement model is adopted. Three dimensional stress strain relations are used. The generalised displacement components referred to middle plane are expressed over plate region in terms of unknown coefficients using double trigonometric series. Minimisation of total potential energy gives decoupled sets of six simultaneous equations. Explicit form of the equations is developed. Some results are given to assess the validity of the approach.