On the bending of clamped rectangular plates (Q1324631)

The authors investigate the bending of clamped rectangular Kirchhoff plates under any lateral (and with respect to the Cartesian coordinates symmetric) load. They use the well-known superposition method choosing Fourier series for the lateral displacement, the boundary conditions leading to an infinite system of linear algebraic equations for the unknown coefficients. The essential result is the justification of the simple reduction method characterized by the neglect of ``higher coefficients'' and thus leading to a finite system whose solution is shown to be convergent. However, the shear forces at the boundaries turn out to be generally not convergent.