The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

A new family of quadrilateral thick plate finite elements based on linked interpolation

Auricchio, Ferdinando; Taylor, Robert L.

UCB/SEMM-1993/10, Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1993-10, 42 pages (500/C23/93/10)

The authors present a new family of quadrilateral finite elements developed within the framework of a shear deformable plate theory. All the elements take advantage of the so-called linked interpolation, i.e. a higher order interpolation for the transverse displacement is obtained using the discrete parameters of the rotational field. Based on an extensive set of mixed patch tests, a careful study of the element behavior is performed. Moreover, the results for a large group of standard numerical examples are presented, together with the results from three other elements available in the literature. All the elements show proper rank, good interpolating capacity and nonlocking effects in the limiting case of thin plate.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/SEMM/SEMM-93-10.pdf (2 MB)