Beam Analog for Plate Elements

A beam-analog to continuously attached elements has been established as a method for the analysis of a continuum. Although the analog grid is composed only of orthogonally connected beams, it takes the Poisson's effect into consideration. This effect is introduced by considering that the principal axes of the beam cross sections lie in planes inclined to the plane of the element. The discretization of the element is made by lumping its stiffness properties and loads uniformly in two orthogonal directions along the length of the beams. Different examples are chosen to represent different boundary conditions, including the free edge and the free corner, under the action of different types of loads. There is agreement between the results obtained by applying the proposed analog, and those calculated by the available exact solutions as well as the experimental results.