Thermal Stresses in Rectangular Plates

Abstract

SummaryThe characteristic functions for beam vibration modes are used to derive an approximate solution for the calculation of thermal stresses in rectangular isotropic flat plates subjected to arbitrary temperature distributions in the plane of the plate and constant temperatures through the plate thickness. The thermal stresses are obtained in the form of generalised Fourier expansions in terms of the characteristic functions, and their derivatives, representing normal modes of vibration of a clamped-clamped beam. Since these functions have recently been tabulated, the practical application of this new method to the thermoelastic stress analysis of plates presents no difficulty.