Thick Lévy plates re-visited

This paper is concerned with the bending problem of Lévy plates which are simply supported on two opposite edges with any combination of simply supported, clamped or free conditions at the remaining two edges. This study attempts to solve thick Lévy plate problems in a novel way by establishing bending relationships that allow the prediction of Mindlin plate results using the corresponding Kirchhoff solutions. Based on the concept of load equivalence, these relationships obviate the need for complicated thick plate analyses that involve significant computation time and effort. Numerical plate solutions are then determined from these relationships and the validity of these results is verified using other known results and those generated using the abaqus software. It is through this study that the only analytical Mindlin plate solutions by Cooke and Levinson (Int. J. Mech. Sci. 25 (1983) 207) are found to contain errors. In this study, it is found that there are important distinctions between the Mindlin and Reissner plate theories. These differences will also be substantiated by numerical comparison.