Abstract: The present paper is concerned with the lateral bending problem ofrectangular plate with four sides clamped under the uniformly distributed load. To solve this problem, a new superposition method is developed, which is considerably simpler than, but based on the similar method developed bv S. Timoshenko. A series of satisfactorily calculated solutions of isotropic plate and orthotropic plate are obtained by using the new method. Furthermore, by means of the analogical characteristics between the thermal problem in an orthotropic medium and the lateral bending problem of clamped orthotropic plate, the thermal stresses can straightforwardly be obtained from the bending moments of the orthotropic plate which has the same shape as the section of the orthotropic body in the thermal problem, and vice versa. As examples, numerical solutions to a rectangular plate are listed.

Key words: clamped, plate, lateral bending, thermal stress, analogical