Abstract: This article will discuss the bending problems of the rectangular plates with free boundaries on elastic foundations. We talk over the two cases, that is, the plate acted on its center by a concentrated force and the plate subjected to by a concentrated force equally at four corner points respectively. We select a flexural function which satisfies not only all the geometric boundary conditions on free edges wholly but also the boundary conditions of the total internal forces. We apply the variational method meanwhile and then obtain better approximate solutions.

Key words: rectangular thin plate, bending problem, Galerkin's variational method, flexural function