Nonlinear bending of inhomogeneous plates

This paper presents a study on inhomogeneous plates comprised of transversely isotropic materials. The properties of the materials are gradient along their thickness direction and include laminates as a special case. Based on the first-order shear deformation theory, a new set of nonlinear equations in the sense of the von Karman large deflection is presented and reformulated by use of displacement and stress potential functions. In an illustrative example, these equations associated with various boundary conditions are then solved for a rectangular inhomogeneous plate by using the mixed Fourier series technique. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.