Hello all,

I'm having trouble deriving Wagner's equation for the angle of inclination of plate girders. The angle is derived by applying the principle of least internal work. The work expression as well as the final form of the equation are:

Where the variable (V, h, B etc..) are material properties and can be considered as constants. The equation of the angle of inclination is derived by setting the derivative of the work expression w.r.t alpha to 0 and solving. I'm interested in the steps required to derive the final equation. I'm fairly new to Mathematica so on a separate notebook I found the derivative of the work expression and solved for 0. Obviously this returned the roots of the equation however I am not interested in that. Is there a command or a method to solve the equation in terms of other constants? Any help is greatly appreciated, been stuck on this problem for a while now. I can provide any extra info if needed. Thanks!