Stability of elastic plates via Liapunov's Second Method

Stability of a rectangular elastic plate is investigated by means of Liapunov's Second Method. It is assumed that the plate is subjected to tangential follower forces which are parallel to one edge of the plate, that the plate has internal viscous damping, and that it is simply supported and/or clamped along its contour. The main result is that only for sufficiently large damping, stability is ensured for reasonably large follower forces.