This presents the static flexural analysis of a three edge simply supported, one support free (SSFS) rectangular plate under uniformly distributed load using a refined shear deformation plate theory. The shear deformation profile used, is in the form of third order. The governing equations were determined by the method of energy variational calculus, to obtain the deflection and shear deformation along the direction of x and y axis. From the formulated expression, the formulars for determination of the critical lateral imposed load of the plate before deflection reaches the specified maximum specified limit and its corresponding critical lateral imposed load before plate reaches an elastic yield stress is established. The study showed that the critical lateral imposed load decreased as the plates span increases, the critical lateral imposed load increased as the plate thickness increases, as the specified thickness of the plate increased, the value of critical lateral imposed load increased and increase in the value of the allowable deflection value required for the analysis of the plate reduced the chances of failure of a structural member. This approach overcomes the challenges of the conventional practice in the structural analysis and design which involves checking of deflection and shear after design; the process which is proved unreliable and time consuming. It is concluded that the values of critical lateral load obtained by this theory achieve accepted transverse shear stress to the depth of the plate variation in predicting the flexural characteristics for an isotropic rectangular SSFS plate. Numerical comparison was conducted to verify and demonstrate the efficiency of the present theory, and they agreed with previous studies. This proved that the present theory is reliable for the analysis of a rectangular plate. Keywords— Allowable deflection, critical imposed load, energy method, plate theories, shear deformation, SSFS rectangular plate
The Behavior of Rectangular Plate Subjected to Locally Distributed Load
