• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.297-320
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• 2005

In recent years the pure displacement formulation for plate elements has not been as popular as other formulations. We revisit the pure displacement formulation for shear-deformable plate elements and propose a family of N-node, displacement-compatible, fully-integrated, pure-displacement, triangular, Mindlin plate elements, MIN-N. The development has been motivated by the relative simplicity of the pure displacement formulation and by the success of the existing 3-node plate element, MIN3. The formulation of MIN3 is generalized to obtain the MIN-N family, which possesses complete, fully compatible kinematic fields, in which the interpolation functions for transverse displacement are one degree higher than those for rotations. General element-level formulas for the thin-limit Kirchhoff constraints are developed. The 6-node, 18 degree-of-freedom element MIN6, with cubic displacement and quadratic rotations, is implemented and tested extensively. Numerical results show that MIN6 exhibits good performance for both static and dynamic analyses in the linear, elastic regime. The results illustrate that the fully-integrated MIN6 element has excellent performance in the thin limit, even for coarse meshes, and that it does not require shear relaxation.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.86 no.6
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• pp.765-778
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• 2023

This study investigates the free vibration and buckling analyses of isotropic curved plate structures fixed at all ends. The Kirchhoff-Love Plate Theory (KLPT) and Finite Element Method (FEM) are employed to model the curved structure. In order to perform the finite element analysis, a four-node quadrilateral element with 5 degrees of freedom (DOF) at each node is utilized. Additionally, the drilling effect (θ_z) is considered as minimal to satisfy the DOF of the structure. Lagrange's equation of motion is used in order to obtain the first ten natural frequencies and the critical buckling values of the structure. The effects of various radii of curvatures and aspect ratio on the natural frequency and critical buckling load values for the single-bay and two-bay curved frames are investigated within this scope. A computer code based on finite element analysis is developed to perform free vibration and buckling analysis of curved plate frames. The natural frequency and critical buckling load values of the present study are compared with ANSYS R18.2 results. It has been concluded that the results of the present study are in good agreement with ANSYS results for different radii of curvatures and aspect ratio values of both single-bay and two-bay structures.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.277-298
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• 2002

In this study, free vibration analysis of Reissner plates on Pasternak foundation is carried out by mixed finite element method based on the G$\hat{a}$teaux differential. New boundary conditions are established for plates on Pasternak foundation. This method is developed and applied to numerous problems by Ak$\ddot{o}$z and his co-workers. In dynamic analysis, the problem reduces to the solution of a standard eigenvalue problem and the mixed element is based upon a consistent mass matrix formulation. The element has four nodes and bending and torsional moments, transverse shear forces, rotations and displacements are the basic unknowns. The element performance is assessed by comparison with numerical examples known from literature. Validity limits of Kirchhoff plate theory is tested by dynamic analysis. Shear locking effects are tested as far as $h/2a=10^{-6}$ and it is observed that REC32 is free from shear locking.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.307-314
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• 2016

Energy flow analysis(EFA) is a representative method that can predict the statistical energetics of structures at high frequencies. Generally, as the frequency increases, the shear distortion and rotatory inertia effects in the out-of-plane motion of beams or plates become important. Therefore, to predict the out-of-plane energetics of coupled structures in the high frequency range, the energy flow analyses of Timoshenko beam and Mindlin plate are required. Unlike the energy flow model of Kirchhoff plate, the energy flow model of Mindlin plate is composed of three kinds of energy governing equations(out-of-plane shear wave, bending dominant flexural wave, and shear dominant flexural wave). This paper performed the energy flow finite element analysis(EFFEA) of coplanar coupled Mindlin plates. For EFFEA of coplanar coupled Mindlin plates, the energy flow finite element formulation of out-of-plane energetics in the Mindlin plate was performed. The general EFFEA program was implemented by MATLAB® language. For the verification of EFFEA of Mindlin plate, the various numerical applications were done successfully.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.605-623
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• 2015

A formulation of the boundary element method (BEM) based on Kirchhoff's hypothesis to analyse stiffened plates composed by beams and slabs with different materials is proposed. The stiffened plate is modelled by a zoned plate, where different values of thickness, Poisson ration and Young's modulus can be defined for each sub-region. The proposed integral representations can be used to analyze the coupled stretching-bending problem, where the membrane effects are taken into account, or to analyze the bending and stretching problems separately. To solve the domain integrals of the integral representation of in-plane displacements, the beams and slabs domains are discretized into cells where the displacements have to be approximated. As the beams cells nodes are adopted coincident to the elements nodes, new independent values arise only in the slabs domain. Some numerical examples are presented and compared to a wellknown finite element code to show the accuracy of the proposed model.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.553-566
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• 2023

A circular tank foundation resting on the ground and subjected to axisymmetric horizontal and vertical loads and moments is analyzed using the variational principles of mechanics. The circular foundation is assumed to behave as a Kirchhoff plate with in-plane and transverse displacements. The soil beneath the foundation is assumed to be a multi-layered continuum in which the horizontal and vertical displacements are expressed as products of separable functions. The differential equations of plate and soil displacements are obtained by minimizing the total potential energy of the plate-soil system and are solved using the finite element and finite difference methods following an iterative algorithm. Comparisons with the results of equivalent two-dimensional finite element analysis and other researchers establish the accuracy of the method.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.68 no.4
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• pp.385-398
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• 2018

In the present paper, we offer a new flat shell finite element. It is the result of the combination of a membrane element and a bending element, both based on the strain-based formulation. It is known that $C^{\circ}$ plane membrane elements provide poor deflection and stress for problems where bending is dominant. In addition, they encounter continuity and compliance problems when they connect to C1 class plate elements. The reach of the present work is to surmount these problems when a membrane element is coupled with a thin plate element in order to construct a shell element. The membrane element used is a triangular element with four nodes, three nodes at the vertices of the triangle and the fourth one at its barycenter. Each node has three degrees of freedom, two translations and one rotation around the normal. The coefficients related to the degrees of freedom at the internal node are subsequently removed from the element stiffness matrix by using the static condensation technique. The interpolation functions of strain, displacements and stresses fields are developed from equilibrium conditions. The plate element used for the construction of the present shell element is a triangular four-node thin plate element based on Kirchhoff plate theory, the strain approach, the four fictitious node, the static condensation and the analytic integration. The shell element result of this combination is robust, competitive and efficient.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.4
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• pp.435-449
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• 2020

This work presents the formulation of the isogeometric collocation method to solve the strong form equation of a unified and integrated approach of Reissner Mindlin plate theory (UI-RM). In this plate theory model, the total displacement is expressed in terms of bending and shear displacements. Rotations, curvatures, and shear strains are represented as the first, the second, and the third derivatives of the bending displacement, respectively. The proposed formulation is free from shear locking in the Kirchhoff limit and is equally applicable to thin and thick plates. The displacement field is approximated using the B-splines functions, and the strong form equation of the fourth-order is solved using the collocation approach. The convergence properties and accuracy are demonstrated with square plate problems of thin and thick plates with different boundary conditions. Two approaches are used for convergence tests, e.g., increasing the polynomial degree (NELT = 1×1 with p = 4, 5, 6, 7) and increasing the number of element (NELT = 1×1, 2×2, 3×3, 4×4 with p = 4) with the number of control variable (NCV) is used as a comparable equivalent variable. Compared with DKMQ element of a 64×64 mesh as the reference for all L/h, the problem analysis with isogeometric collocation on UI-RM plate theory exhibits satisfying results.

• Advanced Composite Materials
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.63-81
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• 2007

Based on the Kirchhoff hypothesis of normal-remain-normal, the present work analyses piezoelectric laminated plates, wherein poled piezoelectric laminae are transversely isotropic and function as actuators. A quadric electric field is induced inside a piezoelectric lamina under a given applied voltage and mechanical bending. The governing equations for the piezoelectric laminated plate derived from the principle of virtual work in terms of the electric enthalpy have the same forms as those for a conventional composite laminated plate. We use rectangular sandwich plates of Al/PZT/Al and PZT/Al/PZT with four simply supported edges to demonstrate the prediction of the maximum bending stress in the PZT layer. The analytic solutions are verified by three-dimensional finite element analysis.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.83-114
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• 2003

A new simple 3-node triangular flat-shell element with standard nodal DOF (6 DOF per node) is proposed for the linear and geometrically nonlinear analysis of very thin to thick plate and shell structures. The formulation of element GT9 (Long and Xu 1994), a generalized conforming membrane element with rigid rotational freedoms, is employed as the membrane component of the new shell element. Both one-point reduced integration scheme and a corresponding stabilization matrix are adopted for avoiding membrane locking and hourglass phenomenon. The bending component of the new element comes from a new generalized conforming Kirchhoff-Mindlin plate element TSL-T9, which is derived in this paper based on semiLoof constrains and rational shear interpolation. Thus the convergence can be guaranteed and no shear locking will happen. Furthermore, a simple hybrid procedure is suggested to improve the stress solutions, and the Updated Lagrangian formulae are also established for the geometrically nonlinear problems. Numerical results with solutions, which are solved by some other recent element models and the models in the commercial finite element software ABAQUS, are presented. They show that the proposed element, denoted as GMST18, exhibits excellent and better performance for the analysis of thin-think plates and shells in both linear and geometrically nonlinear problems.