Triangular Elements for Kirchhoff Plates

The governing equations as well as the work equation concerning the Principle of virtual Displacements are given in Section 6.2 regarding Kirchhoff’s plate theory. They are independent of the element formulation, so that they can be adopted unchanged when considering triangular elements. The coordinate system for the description of the triangular elements for plates can be taken to be the same as the one introduced in Section 7.