Bending of Circular Plates Supported at Number of Points

There are many methods available in the literature to study the static behavior of plates with different boundary conditions. Except for a few simple cases, exact solutions for plate problems are rather difficult to obtain. In many cases, one may have to resort to various approximate and numerical methods. Each method has its own merits and demerits. In this note, a new method of solving plate bending problems known as charge simulation method is introduced. This method is somewhat similar to the boundary element method, but differs from it in that the source is placed outside the domain. The method is applied to a circular plate fixed at a number of points along its edge. Experiments have been carried out to check the results presented.