Mindlin–Reissner plate theory

Summary

Mindlin–Reissner plate theory is a plate theory for moderately thick plates that takes transverse shear deformation into account. Normals to the mid-plane stay straight but may tilt away from the normal of the deformed mid-plane. So the rotations of the normals are unknowns besides the deflection. It is the plate analogue of Timoshenko–Ehrenfest beam theory and reduces to Kirchhoff–Love plate theory when the shear stiffness becomes infinite. It is widely used in finite element analysis, where it needs only continuous, not continuously differentiable, approximations.