A CURVATURE-CONSTRUCTED METHOD FOR BENDING ANALYSIS OF THIN PLATES USING THREE-NODE TRIANGULAR CELLS

Abstract

This paper presents a curvature-constructed method (CCM) for bending analysis of thin plates using three-node triangular cells and assumed piecewisely linear deflection field. In the present CCM, the formulation is based on the classic thin plate theory, and only deflection field is treated as the field variable that is assumed piecewisely linear using a set of three-node triangular background cells. The slopes at nodes and/or the mid-edge points of the triangular cells are first obtained using the gradient smoothing techniques (GST) over different smoothing domains. Three schemes are devised to construct the curvature in each cell using these slopes at nodes and/or the mid-edge points. The generalized smoothed Galerkin weak form is then used to create the discretized system equations. The essential rotational boundary conditions are imposed in the process of constructing the curvature field, and the translational boundary conditions are imposed in the same way as in the standard FEM. A number of numerical examples, including both static and free vibration analyses, are studied using the present CCM and the numerical results are compared with the analytical ones and those in the published literatures. The results show that outstanding schemes can obtain very accurate solutions.