A new discretely stiffened circular plate theory is presented in outline. The governing plate equations are solved using a finite-difference implementation of the dynamic relaxation (DR) algorithm. Large deflection numerical solutions are presented for uniformly loaded clamped plates stiffened by a single eccentric rectangular cross-section diametral stiffener. Deflection, stress resultant and stress couple results for two stiffener depths are compared with corresponding results computed with the ANSYS finite element program. It is shown that the two analyses produce results which are not wholly in agreement, particularly in the case of the stress resultants at the centre of the plate. It is suggested that extrapolation and degeneracy procedures used in the finite element analysis may possibly account for the differences in the stress resultants.