Bending of an Annularly Loaded Square Plate With a Central Circular Hole
Although uniformly loaded square plates with round holes are analyzed in several references, a systematic approach to the analysis for a ring load does not appear to have been presented before. As in the case of the uniform load, the exact solution to the plate bending problem for an annular load about a central circular hole cannot be developed in closed form; however, accurate approximate methods can be developed. The method employed in this paper uses least-squares point-matching for the boundary conditions along the straight edges and the singularity-function approach for the radially discontinuous loading conditions. Deflection and bending-moment results in the form of curves are presented for selected ratios of hole diameter to plate size and for different annular loading conditions. Both simply supported and clamped boundaries at the outer edge are considered while the inner edge is assumed to be free.