Abstract:
Analysis of curved plate elements requires a high computational effort to obtain
reliable solutions for design purposes. Available commercial programs are
expensive and they need thorough knowledge for effective use. There is therefore
need to code cheaper and accessible programs. This is also in line with vision 2030
of the government of Kenya, of using sustainable methods of production to drive the
economy to the middle class level. To address this issue, a uniquemodel is
formulated based on the Euler-Bernoulli beam model. This model is applicable to
thin elements which include plate and membrane elements.
This thesispresents a finite element theory to calculate the master stiffness of a
curved plate. The master stiffness takes into account the stiffness, the geometry and
the loading of the element. The determinant of the master stiffness is established
from which the buckling load which is unknown in the matrix is evaluated by the
principal of bifurcation.The curved element is divided into 2,3,6,9 or 12 elements;
this demonstrates the computational effort to a reliable solution.
Numerical analysis is carried out by abstracting the procedural development of the
theory and programming it to run on a Visual Basic platform. The results obtained
show that curved plates resist a higher load when it is directed towards the center of
the arcand plates with large curvatures resist higher loads than those with smaller
curvatures. A comparison made between the result obtained in this research and
those of other methods show that there is a good agreement between the proposed
and the existing methods. Thus the proposed method is suitable for analysis of
curved plates.The research is useful for the study of curved plate elements as it
manipulates the given plate and loading parameters to give optimal output.
1
