A Comparison of Dynamic Behaviours of Mindlin, Shear, Rotatory and Kirchoff Plates Supported by Subgrade under Moving Load

Various Plates and Plate-like transport structures, such as roads, railway bridges, space vehicles and submarines, are usually subjected to different types of loads. These loads include cars, Railway vehicles and human beings. In this paper we made an attempt to analyse the dynamic responses of some specific plates to moving load. Four types of plates were considered, namely: Mindlin plate, Shear plate, Rotatory plate and Kirchoff plate. The moving load is assumed to be uniform partially distributed, while the plates are isotropic and supported by Winkler foundation. Finite difference technique was used to transform the set of dimensionless first order partial differential equations to a set of algebraic equations. Computer programs were developed and used in conjunction with MATLAB in order to obtain the desired solution. It was observed that the solution obtained were consistent with the ones in literature. Specifically, it was observed that for fixed values of velocity, contact area and foundation constant, the values of the maximum deflection are higher for Mindlin plates when compared to shear, rotatory and Kirchoff plates.