Displacement boundary method for orthotropic plates

An alternative boundary element approach, called Displacement,Boundary Method, for orthotropic plate analysis is presented. The governing equations of the problem are obtained from a variational principle in which a modified hybrid functional is used. The independent variables are the generalised displacements and generalised tractions on the boundary and the lateral deflection in the domain. A superposition of regular, static fundamental solutions is used for the approximation of displacements in the domain whereas shape functions and nodal values are employed to model the boundary variables, i.e. displacements and tractions. The stiffness matrix preserves the symmetry and definiteness properties of the continuum. It involves integrals of regular kernels only in its definition and is numerically computed by running integrations over the boundary only. The final resolving system is solved with the classical approach using-standard numerical procedures. Some applications were worked out and the results were found to be in very good agreement with those obtained using other solution techniques.