Abstract: Starting from the principle of the minimum potential energy, the governing differential equation and the boundary constraint conditions for the bending problem are differenced unitedly and the difference schemes which depend only on the mesh points in plate area are obtained. A method to solve the difference equations by means of combining the direct manner with Gauss-Seidel iteration method is proposed. And a numerical example is given in the paper.

Key words: bending problem of thin elastic plate, non-homogenity and variable thickness, finite difference method