On stress singularities at angular corners of plates of arbitrary thickness under tension

Stress singularities at angular corners of plates of arbitrary thickness with free boundaries subjected to in-plane loading are studied within the first order plate theory. By adapting a stress resultant function approach a characteristic equation for determining the structure and orders of the singularities near the vertex is developed. This equation differs from that obtained within the classical plane theory of elasticity (Williams solution) and includes singularities of the out-off-plane shear stress resultants.