Oh, another thing, a pet peeve of mine...don't jump to software for engineering solutions before you understand the model. A good rule is:
If you can't explain it, don't compute it.
That is, I believe an engineer must be able to model his problem, (in his head, on the back of an envelop, on a...
Mr. Stohler and Cyak have provided good and correct solutions, in my opinion. I use these formulas often.
It seemes everyone is working on plate theory these last few days.
Having spent years chugging around in Roarke, I can recommend: try to model it as a beam any time that you can. Steel likes to act as a beam. Roark's plate analyses are based on beam-like behavior of the plate material, anyway, on a differential-element basis with "Poissons"...
