A Quasi-Green’s Function Method for the Bending Problem of Simply Supported Trapezoidal Shallow Spherical Shells on Winkler Foundation

The quasi-Green’s function method (QGFM) is applied to solve the bending problem of simply supported trapezoidal shallow spherical shells on Winkler foundation. A quasi-Green’s function is established by using the fundamental solution and the boundary equation of the problem. And the function satisfies the homogeneous boundary condition of the problem. Then the differential equation of the problem is reduced to two simultaneous Fredholm integral equations of the second kind by the Green’s formula. The singularity of the kernel of the integral equation is overcome by choosing a suitable form of the normalized boundary equation. The comparison with the ANSYS finite element solution shows a good agreement, and it demonstrates the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method.