On a Four-Node Quadrilateral Plate for Laminated Composites

Abstract

An assessment of the efficiency and convergence characteristics of a four-node quadrilateral plate finite element in the analysis of laminated composites is performed. The element, which is suitable for global response analysis, is developed in the framework of the strain gradient notation such that its modeling capabilities as well as modeling deficiencies can be physically interpreted by the analyst during the formulation process. Thus, shear locking typically encountered in four-noded plate elements is identified as caused by spurious terms which appear in the shear strain polynomial expansions. These identified spurious terms are removed a priori such that shear locking does not occur during numerical analysis and numerical remedies do not need to be applied. Stress solutions for different laminated plates are presented to demonstrate that the corrected model converges well to reference solutions.

Free vibration analysis employing strain gradient notation four-node plane elements and considering the effects of parasitic shear

“…A comprehensive synthesis of these developing works on strain gradient notation has been presented (Dow, 1999). Since then, research involving strain gradient notation has continued to be developed by Mohamed, Byrd, and Dow (2005), Abdalla Filho, Fagundes, and Machado, (2006), Abdalla Filho, Belo, and Dow (2016), Abdalla Filho, Belo, and Dow (2017), and Abdalla Filho, Dow, and Belo (2020.…”