A comparison of the plate theories in the sense of Kirchhoff–Love and Reissner–Mindlin

In this article we compare the two plate theories in the sense of Kirchhoff–Love and Reissner–Mindlin for several different settings of the physical system. We establish existence, uniqueness and regularity of solutions to the respective boundary and initial boundary value problems. Moreover, we give asymptotic expansions of the solutions in the limit of a vanishing plate thickness, ϵ→0, whenever this is possible. Finally, we compare the solutions in the sense of Kirchhoff–Love and Reissner–Mindlin in that very limit. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.