ABSTRACT
This article presents a static analysis of the orthotropic and isotropic thin plates in pure bending under uniform and concentrated load, by finite elements method. For space modeling the isoparametric quadrilateral element with 4 nodes Q4, and 3 degrees of freedom per node is used. The formulation of the element is founded on a linear theory of the orthotropic plates, like, the kinematics assumptions of Mindlin-Reissner which hold in account the effect of transverse shearing. The linear stiffness matrix is evaluated numerically by using the technique of selective numerical integration. The load vector is evaluated in an exact way by Gauss type diagrams.
