Coupled use of reduced integration and non‐conforming modes in quadratic Mindlin plate element

Abstract

AbstractThe applications of the reduced integration technique, and the addition of non‐conforming modes and their coupling to Mindlin plate elements to improve their basic behaviour are reviewed and the establishment of a series of new plate elements by combined use of these schemes is presented in this paper. The element formulation is based upon the quadratic Mindlin plate concept. The results obtained by new elements converge to the exact solutions very rapidly as the mesh is refined and show reliable solutions even for severely distorted meshes. The new elements have the requisite numbers of zero eigenvalues associated with rigid body modes to avoid spurious zero energy modes. These elements are shown to solve the shear locking problem completely so that they are applicable to a wide range of plate problems, giving a high accuracy for both thick and thin plates.