Differential cubature method for analysis of shear deformable rectangular plates on Pasternak foundations

In this paper, the differential cubature method (DCM) was applied to the bending analysis of shear deformable plates resting on Pasternak foundation. An attractive advantage of the DCM is that it can produce the acceptable accuracy of numerical results with very few grid points in the solution domain and therefore can be very useful for rapid evaluation in engineering design. The detailed procedures for discretizing the governing equations and boundary conditions of the title problems using the DCM are presented. Numerical solutions for rectangular thick plates on Pasternak foundation and subjected to different boundary conditions are obtained. The convergence studies are carried out to establish the minimal grid points needed for achieving accurate solutions. Next, the solutions for some selected cases are presented and verified by comparing them with the published values. It is observed that the DCM is able to furnish convergent solution with relatively fewer grid points than the more established differential quadrature method (DQM). © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.