A Reissner-type plate theory for monoclinic material derived by extending the uniform-approximation technique by orthogonal tensor decompositions of nth-order gradients

The uniform-approximation approach is an a-priori assumption free structured approach for the derivation of hierarchies of lower-dimensional theories for thin structures with increasing approximation accuracy. In this publication, we derive a second-order consistent plate theory for monoclinic material and investigate several theories that arise from the original theory by a pseudo-reduction approach which aims to reduce the number of PDEs that are to solve. A one-variable model that governs only the interior solution is presented and, in addition, an extended two-variable model that also covers edge effects. Since the second introduced variable is a rotation of a vector field, we have to uniquely identify the rotation dependent parts in general gradients of the vector field, which is resolved by the introduction of an orthogonal decomposition. The final two-variable model is equivalent to the Reissner–Mindlin theory for the special case of isotropic material, whereas the one-variable model is equivalent to the first Reissner PDE. In contrast to this special case, the two-variable model is a coupled system of two PDEs for general monoclinic material.