Contact problem for a ring plate on an elastic half-space. Variational approach

A contact problem of an axisymmetrically loaded flexible ring plate lying frictionlessly on an elastic half-space is considered. The plate subsidences are represented as a power series with unknown coefficients, which are determined by the Rayleigh–Ritz method using the minimum condition for the total strain energy of the plate and the elastic foundation. The method of orthogonal polynomials is used implicitly.