Bending of linearly tapered annular Mindlin plates

This paper presents exact axisymmetric bending solutions for linearly tapered, annular Mindlin plates with various boundary conditions for the inner and outer edges. The Mindlin plate theory has been adopted so as to incorporate the effect of transverse shear deformation which becomes significant in tapered and thick plates. The analytical solutions, hitherto not available, are useful as benchmark solutions for checking the validity, convergence and accuracy of numerical methods and software for tapered plate analysis.