New Method for Exact Analysis of Folded Plates

A new, time-saving method of analysis for prismatic folded plates is presented. It is based on the exact theory which considers the two-way slab action and the deep-girder effect of the plates. Applying the rapidly converging iterations of this method until a practically exact solution is obtained, results in savings of at least 50% of the theoretically required amount of computations. For many common folded plate types, the savings amount to as much as 70%. The method is well suited for use with an electronic computer because the repeating, iterative steps of the analysis are easy to program. The method is especially suited for manual operation, because the maximum number of simultaneous equations involved is only n-1, where n means the number of plates of the system.