An Analogy for Certain Anisotropic Plates

Abstract

Although the basic differential equations and appropriate boundary conditions for anisotropic plates have been available for many years, exact solutions are unavailable except for the case of infinitely long rectangular plates [1]. This note describes an analogy between the differential equations of skew (parallelogram) isotropic plates and rectangular anisotropic plates. Although the analogy is restrictive in applicability, it provides several exact solutions for finite length rectangular anisotropic plates. These solutions are useful by themselves and should prove especially valuable in assessing the accuracy of approximate analyses of anisotropic plates.