Nonlinear analysis of thin rectangular plates on Winkler-Pasternak elastic foundations by DSC-HDQ methods

This article introduces a coupled methodology for the numerical solution of geometrically nonlinear static and dynamic problem of thin rectangular plates resting on elastic foundation. Winkler-Pasternak two-parameter foundation model is considered. Dynamic analogues Von Karman equations are used. The governing nonlinear partial differential equations of the plate are discretized in space and time domains using the discrete singular convolution (DSC) and harmonic differential quadrature (HDQ) methods, respectively. Two different realizations of singular kernels such as the regularized Shannon's kernel (RSK) and Lagrange delta (LD) kernel are selected as singular convolution to illustrate the present DSC algorithm. The analysis provides for both clamped and simply supported plates with immovable inplane boundary conditions at the edges. Various types of dynamic loading, namely a step function, a sinusoidal pulse, an N-wave pulse, and a triangular load are investigated and the results are presented graphically. The effects of Winkler and Pasternak foundation parameters, influence of mass of foundation on the response have been investigated. In addition, the influence of damping on the dynamic analysis has been studied. The accuracy of the proposed DSC-HDQ coupled methodology is demonstrated by the numerical examples. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.