ABSTRACT
The finite strip approach has considerable advantages over the conventional finite element method for the plate bending problems considered here in which the geometry is fairly simple and does not change in one direction, but nevertheless such structures are so frequently used in practice that a special and more economical treatment is warranted. Thin plate bending strips are developed through the Principle of Minimum Total Potential Energy. This strip uses an additional internal nodal line which, for the sake of convenience, is usually placed midway between the two longitudinal edges. Since each nodal line includes two displacement parameters, a deflection and a rotation, it is apparent that the half bandwidth of the final stiffness matrix is 50% higher than that for a lower order strip. In this strip, the transverse curvature is also used as a nodal displacement parameter in addition to the standard deflection and rotation variables.
