A New Rectangular Finite Element Formulation Based on Higher Order Displacement Theory for Thick and Thin Composite and Sandwich Plates
- 1 Shaktibad Apartment, Phase-2, Ground Floor, Garia Station Road, Calcutta, India
- 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Structural Mechanics, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Abstract
A new displacement based higher order element has been formulated that is ideally suitable for shear deformable com posite and sandwich plates. Suitable functions for displacements and rotations for each node have been selected so that the element shows rapid convergence, an excellent response against transverse shear loading and requires no shear cor rection factors. It is completely lock-free and behaves extremely well for thin to thick plates. To make the element rap idly convergent and to capture warping effects for composites, higher order displacement terms in the displacement kinematics have been considered for each node. The element has eleven degrees of freedom per node. Shear deforma tion has also been considered in the formulation by taking into account shear strains ( r xz and r yz ) as nodal unknowns. The element is very simple to formulate and could be coded up in research software. A small Fortran code has been developed to implement the element and various examples of isotropic and composite plates have been analyzed to show the effectiveness of the element.
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