Abstract:
This thesis deals with the application of the direct boundary element method,employing linear elements with element connectivity, to the plate bending problems.Rectangular and square plates with simply supported, clamped and simply supported-clampededges were considered. The plates were subjected to transverse concentrated, uniformlydistributed, hydrostatic and triangular prism loads.A computer program for the solution of rectangular supported plates using linearelements with element connectivity was developed. The rectangular plates were discretizedwith 12, 24 and 36 elements and the square plates were discretized with 8, 16 and 32elements. Because of the treatment of domain integral by subdomain division, theinvestigation of the most suitable number of subdomain was firstly carried out. Thereafter,the variables along the boundary (slope, moment, equivalent shear and corner force) and thecentral deflection of the plate were determined and compared with the known analyticalsolutions.The investigation showns that 1200 and 1600 subdomain divisions are the mostsuitable for the rectangular and square plates, respectively. The program itself convergesrapidly when the number of elements along the edges is increased. The calculated values ofthe central deflection and the variables along the boundary of the plates agree well with theanalytical solutions and the discrepancy is typically less than 1%. Therefore, the directboundary element method is a good tools for analysing the plate bending problems.