• Computational Structural Engineering
• /
• v.1 no.2
• /
• pp.83-90
• /
• 1988

The present work is concerned with the improvement of finite element for the analysis of plate bending structures. The element formulation is based upon Mindlin plate concept. The displacement field of this element is formed by adding nonconforming modes to two rotational displacement components of a 'heterosis plate element. The element has the requisite numbers of zero eigenvalues associated with rigid body modes to avoid the spurious zero energy mode. It is shown that the results obtained by the element converged to the exact solutions very rapidly as the mesh is refined and exhibited reliable solutions through numerical studies for standard benchmark problems. This element is shown to overcome the shear locking problem completely in very thin plate situation even for irregular meshes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.21 no.5
• /
• pp.539-551
• /
• 2005

Finite elements based on isoparametric formulation are known to suffer spurious stiffness properties and corresponding stress oscillations, even when care is taken to ensure that completeness and continuity requirements are enforced. This occurs frequently when the physics of the problem requires multiple strain components to be defined. This kind of error, commonly known as locking, can be circumvented by using reduced integration techniques to evaluate the element stiffness matrices instead of the full integration that is mathematically prescribed. However, the reduced integration technique itself can have a further drawback - rank deficiency, which physically implies that spurious energy modes (e.g., hourglass modes) are introduced because of reduced integration. Such instability in an existing stiffness matrix is generally detected by means of an eigenvalue test. In this paper we show that a knowledge of the dimension of the solution space spanned by the column vectors of the strain-displacement matrix can be used to identify the instabilities arising in an element due to reduced/selective integration techniques a priori, without having to complete the element stiffness matrix formulation and then test for zero eigenvalues.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.83-90
• /
• 1987

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

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 2001.10a
• /
• pp.409-416
• /
• 2001

The present work is concerned with the development of new variable-node Mindlin plate bending elements. The proposed variable-node elements pass the patch tests, do not show spurious zero-energy modes, and do not produce shear locking phenomena. It is also shown that the elements produce reliable solutions through numerical tests for standard benchmark problems.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 2002.10a
• /
• pp.104-111
• /
• 2002

A new triangular element fur the finite element analysis of plate-bending problems is presented. For the purpose of sharing the program code of 4 node plate-bending element, two nodes of the 4-node element are combined to form a triangular element. Thus, the presented element would bring about great deal of efficiency of the computer program. The proposed variable-node elements pass the patch tests, do not show spurious zero-energy modes, and do not produce shear locking phenomena. It is also shown that the elements produce reliable solutions through numerical tests for standard benchmark problems.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2000.04a
• /
• pp.427-434
• /
• 2000

This paper presents a computer program for a 2-D fluid-structure-soil interaction analysis. With this computer program the fluid can be modeled by a spurious free 4-node displacement-based fluid element which uses rotational penalty and mass projection technique in conjunction with the one point reduced integration scheme to remove the spurious zero energy modes. The structure and near field soil are discretized by the standard finite elements while the unbounded far field soil are discretized by the standard finite elements while the unbounded far field soil is represented by the frequency dependent dynamic infinite elements. Sine this method models directly the fluid-structure-soil system it can be applied to the dynamci analysis of 2-D liquid storage structure with complex geometry. For the purpose of verification dynamic analyses for tanks on a rigid foundation and on compliant embankment are carried out. Comparison of the present results with those by ANSYS program shows good agreement.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 2000.04b
• /
• pp.289-296
• /
• 2000

This paper presents a method of seismic analysis for a 2-D fluid-structure-soil interaction systems. With this method, the fluid can be modeled by spurious free 4-node displacement-based fluid elements which use rotational penalty and mass projection technique in conjunction with the one point reduced integration scheme to remove the spurious zero energy modes. The structure and the near-field soil are discretized by the standard 2-D finite elements, while the unbounded far-field soil is represented by the dynamic infinite elements in the frequency domain. Since this method directly models the fluid-structure-soil interaction systems, it can be applied to the dynamic analysis of a 2-D liquid storage structure with complex geometry. Finally, results of seismic analyses are presented for a spent fuel storage tank embedded in a layered half-space and a massive concrete dam on a layered half-space.

• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
• /
• 2001.10a
• /
• pp.132-137
• /
• 2001

This paper presents a method of seismic analysis for a 2-D fluid-structure-soil interaction systems. With this method, the fluid can be modeled by spurious free 4-node displacement-based fluid elements which use rotational penalty and mass projection technique in conjunction with the one point reduced integration scheme to remove the spurious zero energy modes. The structure and the near-field soil are discretized by the standard 2-D finite elements, while the unbounded far-field soil is represented by the dynamic infinite elements in the frequency domain. Since this method directly models the fluid-structure-soil interaction systems, it can be applied to the dynamic analysis of a 2-D liquid storage structure with complex geometry. Finally, results of seismic analyses are presented for a spent fuel storage tank embedded in a layered half-space and a massive concrete dam on a layered half-space.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.4 no.5
• /
• pp.569-586
• /
• 1996

A new three-dimensional 8-node solid element with rotational degrees of freedom is presented. The proposed element is established by adding rotational degrees of freedom to the basic 8-node solid element. Thus the element has three translations and three rotational degrees of freedom per node. The corner rotations are introduced by transforming the hierarchical mid-edge displacements which are parabolic shape along an edge. The derivation of the element is based on the mixed variational principles in which the rotations are introduced as independent variables. Several types of non-conforming modes are selectively added to the displacement fields to obtain a series of improved elements. The resulting elements do not have the spurious zero energy modes and Poisson's ratio locking and pass patch test. Numerical examples show that presented non-conforming solid elements with rotational degrees of freedom show good performance even in the highly distorted meshes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
• /
• v.16 no.3 s.70
• /
• pp.295-303
• /
• 2004

In this paper, an improved four-node Reissner-Mindlin plate-bending element with enhanced assumed strain field is presented for the analysis of isotropic and laminated composite plates. To avoid the shear locking and spurious zero energy modes, the transverse shear behavior is improved by the addition of a new enhanced shear strain based on the incompatible displacement mode approach and bubble function. The "standard" enhanced strain fields (Andelfinger and Ramm, 1993) are also employed to improve the in-plane behaviors of the plate elements. The four-node quadrilateral element derived using the first-order shear deformation theory is designated as "14EASP". Several applications are investigated to assess the features and the performances of the proposed element. The results are compared with other finite element solutions and analytical solutions. Numerical examples show that the element is stable, invariant, passes the patch test, and yields good results especially in highly distorted regimes.