Analysis of cracked plates and shells using “metis” finite element model

Abstract

A special form finite element technique is presented for the calculation of displacement and stress field of cracked (or uncracked) plates and shells. The method based on a particular set of hybrid displacement finite element, namely “Metis elements”. Several numerical examples are considered to evaluate the performance of this model. For cracked plate in extension, the element HSM gives high accuracy in computation of stress intensity factors. For plate bending problem with or without crack, the element HSF presents also very good performance. The results are very close to the theoretical solutions of Timoshenko (without crack) and solutions of Chen, Sosa and Eischen (with crack). For the cylindrical shell problem, the present results are also in very good agreement with solutions proposed by Scordelis and Folias.