Bending of a sector‐shaped annular plate with continuous thickness variation along the radial direction

This paper is concerned with the analysis of the problem in the title based on Kirchhoff's (classical thin) plate theory. A class of sector‐shaped annular plates whose straight radial edges are simply‐supported is considered. The boundary conditions at the plate circular edges may be quite general, and between these two edges the plate has varying radial thickness. Closed‐form solutions for the elastic bending problem of sector‐shaped annular plates have been derived based on the small parameter method and Lévy‐type approach. The accuracy of the present model is demonstrated via problems for which the solutions and numerical results are available, and results are also presented for a variety of problems for which solutions are not available in the literature.