A mixed shell formulation accounting for thickness strains and finite strain 3d material models

A non‐linear quadrilateral shell element for the analysis of thin structures is presented. The Reissner–Mindlin theory with inextensible director vector is used to develop a three‐field variational formulation with independent displacements, stress resultants and shell strains. The interpolation of the independent shell strains consists of two parts. The first part corresponds to the interpolation of the stress resultants. Within the second part independent thickness strains are considered. This allows incorporation of arbitrary non‐linear 3d constitutive equations without further modifications. The developed mixed hybrid shell element possesses the correct rank and fulfills the in‐plane and bending patch test. The essential feature of the new element is the robustness in the equilibrium iterations. It allows very large load steps in comparison with other element formulations. We present results for finite strain elasticity, inelasticity, bifurcation and post‐buckling problems. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new hybrid-mixed variational approach for Reissner–Mindlin plates. The MiSP model

A valuable variational approach for plate problems based on the Reissner–Mindlin theory is presented. The new MiSP (Mixed Shear Projected) approach is based on the Hellinger–Reissner variational principle, with a particular representation of transversal shear forces and transversal shear strains. The approximations of the shear forces are derived from those of the bending moments using the corresponding equilibrium relations. The shear strains are defined in terms of the edge tangential strains that are projected on the element degrees of freedom. Two finite elements are developed on the MiSP approach basis: 3-node triangular element MiSP3 and 4-node quadrilateral element MiSP4. Both elements can be considered as the most simple among the existent mixed elements. A modified MiSP model with a derived 4-node element is also presented. Numerical experiments are presented which show that the MiSP elements do not exhibit shear locking and give excellent results for thick and thin plates. They also pass the patch test for a general triangle and quadrilateral. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hybrid displacement function element method: a simple hybrid‐Trefftz stress element method for analysis of Mindlin–Reissner plate

In order to develop robust finite element models for analysis of thin and moderately thick plates, a simple hybrid displacement function element method is presented. First, the variational functional of complementary energy for Mindlin–Reissner plates is modified to be expressed by a displacement function F, which can be used to derive displacement components satisfying all governing equations. Second, the assumed element resultant force fields, which can satisfy all related governing equations, are derived from the fundamental analytical solutions of F. Third, the displacements and shear strains along each element boundary are determined by the locking‐free formulae based on the Timoshenko's beam theory. Finally, by applying the principle of minimum complementary energy, the element stiffness matrix related to the conventional nodal displacement DOFs is obtained. Because the trial functions of the domain stress approximations a priori satisfy governing equations, this method is consistent with the hybrid‐Trefftz stress element method. As an example, a 4‐node, 12‐DOF quadrilateral plate bending element, HDF‐P4‐11 β, is formulated. Numerical benchmark examples have proved that the new model possesses excellent precision. It is also a shape‐free element that performs very well even when a severely distorted mesh containing concave quadrilateral and degenerated triangular elements is employed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improved assumed-stress hybrid shell element with drilling degrees of freedom for linear stress,buckling and free vibration analyses

An improved 4-node quadrilateral assumed-stress hybrid shell element with drilling degrees of freedom is presented. The formulation is based on Hellinger–Reissner variational principle and the shape functions are formulated directly for the 4-node element. The element has 12 membrane degrees of freedom and 12 bending degrees of freedom. It has 9 independent stress parameters to describe the membrane stress resultant field and 13 independent stress parameters to describe the moment and transverse shear stress resultant field. The formulation encompasses linear stress, linear buckling and linear free vibration problems. The element is validated with standard test cases and is shown to be robust. Numerical results are presented for linear stress, buckling, and free vibration analyses.     

Finite rotation quadrilateral element for multi‐layer beams

The paper presents the finite rotations beam equations derived on use of the generalized Reissner hypothesis with a scalar parameter for the transverse extension. The beam strain and change of curvature measures are obtained from the right stretch strain, and the virtual work is given for Biot‐type stress and couple resultants. The strain energy for the first‐order isotropic elastic material is assumed in terms of the right stretch strain, and constitutive equations for the beam stress and couple resultants are derived. Two finite rotation elements are developed from the derived beam equations: a beam element with the transverse stretch and a quadrilateral element. First, the beam element with the uniformly under‐integrated tangent operator is developed. Next, the formula linking the middle‐line variables and the interface variables of the beam is introduced consistently with the generalized Reissner kinematics. Linearization of this formula is performed, and the derived tangent operator is used to convert the two‐node beam element to a four‐node quadrilateral. Both the finite elements have been tested on several numerical examples, some of highly non‐linear characteristics, and their accuracy is very good. It has been established that the quadrilateral element, which is intended for applications to multi‐layer beams, performs very well for high elemental aspect ratios, and can therefore be applied to modelling of very thin layers. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

ASSUMED STRESS C0 QUADRILATERAL/TRIANGULAR PLATE ELEMENTS BY INTERRELATED EDGE DISPLACEMENTS

This paper presents two simple quadrilateral C⁰ plate bending elements with explicit element stiffness matrix. The element formulation is based on assumed element stress fields and the interrelated transverse displacement and rotation along element boundaries. The interrelated edge displacements not only can result in higher-order displacements interpolations for higher accuracy element and overcome the shear locking in thin plate analysis encountered by C⁰ plate elements, but can also unify the four-noded quadrilateral element and its corresponding three-noded triangular element. The latter cannot be achieved by the assumed displacement formulation. The numerical examples demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the present assumed stress C⁰ plate elements.     

A robust non‐linear mixed hybrid quadrilateral shell element

In the paper a non‐linear quadrilateral shell element for the analysis of thin structures is presented. The variational formulation is based on a Hu–Washizu functional with independent displacement, stress and strain fields. The interpolation matrices for the mid‐surface displacements and rotations as well as for the stress resultants and strains are specified. Restrictions on the interpolation functions concerning fulfillment of the patch test and stability are derived. The developed mixed hybrid shell element possesses the correct rank and fulfills the in‐plane and bending patch test. Using Newton's method the finite element approximation of the stationary condition is iteratively solved. Our formulation can accommodate arbitrary non‐linear material models for finite deformations. In the examples we present results for isotropic plasticity at finite rotations and small strains as well as bifurcation problems and post‐buckling response. The essential feature of the new element is the robustness in the equilibrium iterations. It allows very large load steps in comparison to other element formulations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Finite element analysis of rubber-like materials by a mixed model

A Reissner type variational principle is utilized to formulate a mixed finite element model for a finite-strain analysis of Mooney-Rivlin rubber-like materials. An incremental and stationary Lagrangian formulation is adopted. The functional consists of incremental displacements and incremental hydrostatic and distortional stresses as variables. In the finite element formulation the displacements are interpolated in terms of nodal displacements while the two different strss components are approximated independently. The stress parameters for the distortional stresses are eliminated at the element level and the resulting matrix equations for each incremental solution involve the incremental nodal displacements and the average hydrostatic pressure in each element as unknowns. Four-node quadrilateral plane stain elements were used to analyze the inflation of an infinitely long thick-walled cylinder subjected to internal pressure. Both resulting displacements and stresses are found to converge to exact values as the magnitude of the loading increments is decreasing.     

An XFEM frame for plate elements in yield line analyses

A high gradient zone (HGZ) comes into existence in both rotation and deflection displacement fields in the vicinity of a yield line in a plate structure with elastoplastic material. This HGZ makes the displacements non‐smooth locally around the yield line. The Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) has been proved to be an effective numerical method to capture the behavior of a structure with a locally non‐smooth displacement field. In this article, a six‐node triangular and a nine‐node quadrilateral Mindlin–Reissner plate element with the XFEM formulation are presented to trace the elastoplastic behavior of a plate in small‐deformation analyses. Regularized enrichments are employed to enrich the rotation and the deflection displacement approximation fields simultaneously so that the non‐smoothness in a displacement field near a yield line can be captured. The discrete shear gap method is adopted to alleviate shear locking phenomena in the present XFEM plate element. Several plate bending examples are simulated to show the robustness of the enrichment to capture the HGZ resulted from yield lines and the effectiveness of the application of discrete shear gap method in controlling the shear locking in the XFEM plate element. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A low‐order,hexahedral finite element for modelling shells

A thin, eight‐node, tri‐linear displacement, hexahedral finite element is the starting point for the derivation of a constant membrane stress resultant, constant bending stress resultant shell finite element. The derivation begins by introducing a Taylor series expansion for the stress distribution in the isoparametric co‐ordinates of the element. The effect of the Taylor series expansion for the stress distribution is to explicitly identify those strain modes of the element that are conjugate to the mean or average stress and the linear variation in stress. The constant membrane stress resultants are identified with the mean stress components, and the constant bending stress resultants are identified with the linear variation in stress through the thickness along with in‐plane linear variations of selected components of the transverse shear stress. Further, a plane‐stress constitutive assumption is introduced, and an explicit treatment of the finite element's thickness is introduced. A number of elastic simulations show the useful results that can be obtained (tip‐loaded twisted beam, point‐loaded hemisphere, point‐loaded sphere, tip‐loaded Raasch hook, and a beam bent into a ring). All of the gradient/divergence operators are evaluated in closed form providing unequivocal evaluations of membrane and bending strain rates along with the appropriate divergence calculations involving the membrane stress and bending stress resultants. The fact that a hexahedral shell finite element has two distinct surfaces aids sliding interface algorithms when a shell folds back on itself when subjected to large deformations. Published in 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An isostatic assumed stress triangular element for the Reissner–Mindlin plate‐bending problem

The paper describes a new assumed stress triangular element for Reissner–Mindlin plates, called TIP3, with three nodes and three degrees of freedom per node. The kinematics is constructed by means of the so‐called linked interpolation ruled by technically significant degrees of freedom (i.e. one transversal displacement and two rotations per node) without using additional bubble modes. The static representation starts from a moment–shear uncoupled polynomial approximation and is constrained to satisfy some equilibrium conditions in order to reduce the stress parameters to a minimum number. The resulting element is locking free, presents correct rank and passes the bending patch test even for very thin plates. The good performances of the element are demonstrated by several comparisons with other triangular plate elements available in the literature. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An eight‐node hybrid‐stress solid‐shell element for geometric non‐linear analysis of elastic shells

This paper presents eight‐node solid‐shell elements for geometric non‐linear analysis of elastic shells. To subdue shear, trapezoidal and thickness locking, the assumed natural strain method and an ad hoc modified generalized laminate stiffness matrix are employed. A selectively reduced integrated element is formulated with its membrane and bending shear strain components taken to be constant and equal to the ones evaluated at the element centroid. With the generalized stresses arising from the modified generalized laminate stiffness matrix assumed to be independent from the ones obtained from the displacement, an extended Hellinger–Reissner functional can be derived. By choosing the assumed generalized stresses similar to the assumed stresses of a previous solid element, a hybrid‐stress solid‐shell element is formulated. Commonly employed geometric non‐linear homogeneous and laminated shell problems are attempted and our results are close to those of other state‐of‐the‐art elements. Moreover, the hybrid‐stress element converges more readily than the selectively reduced integrated element in all benchmark problems. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An efficient quadrilateral element for plate bending analysis

A simple, shear flexible, quadrilateral plate element is developed based on the Hellinger/Reissner mixed variational principle with independently assumed displacement and stress fields. The crucial point of the selection of appropriate stress parameters is emphasized in the formulation. For this purpose, a set of guidelines is formulated based on the following considerations: (i) suppression of all kinematic deformation modes, (ii) the element has a favourable value for the constraint index in the thin plate limit, (iii) element properties are frame-invariant. For computer implementation the components of the element stiffness matrix are evaluated analytically using the symbolic manipulation package MACSYMA. The effectiveness and practical usefulness of the proposed element are demonstrated by the numerical results of a variety of problems involving thin and moderately thick plates under different loading and support conditions.     

On stress interpolation for hybrid models

A technique is proposed for the selection of stress interpolations for hybrid models. The present paper applies this approach to plane problems. The stiffness matrix is derived using the Hellinger–Reissner variational principle. This formulation uses infinitesimal equilibrium relationships and divides the assumed stress into its lower-order and higher-order parts. The patch test can be passed and the resulting elements are generally invariant. A plane four-node quadrilateral element is described and compared with existing elements. Numerical studies show that the accuracy of the element is generally good.     

On the accuracy of p-version elements for the Reissner–Mindlin plate problem

This paper addresses the question of accuracy of p-version finite element formulations for Reissner–Mindlin plate problems. Three model problems, a circular arc, a rhombic plate and a geometrically complex structure are investigated. Whereas displacements and bending moments turn out to be very accurate without any post-processing even for very coarse meshes, the quality of shear forces computed from constitutive equations is poor. It is shown that significantly improved results can be obtained, if shear forces are computed from equilibrium equations instead. A consistent computation of second derivatives of the shape functions is derived. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A refined finite element model for the analysis of elastic–plastic frames

A finite element model for the elastic–plastic analysis of plane frames is proposed. The formulation is based on the independent modelling of the displacement and plastic strain fields; the latter is modelled both over the cross-section and along the element length as function of a finite number of parameters, which are considered as an extra set of independent variables, in addition to nodal displacements. Stress redistribution is allowed for over the cross-section, but not over the element length, where the distribution of stress resultants (axial forces and bending moments) is imposed consistently with the assumed displacement model; stress redistribution in terms of stress resultants becomes possible only because of the finite number of redundancies introduced when assembling. It is shown that the model can be formulated in such a way that not only compatibility and elasticity, but also equilibrium (in the sense of beam theory), are fully complied with and only the plastic portion of the constitutive relationship is approximately fulfilled, even if, in principle, to any desired level of accuracy. The model produces accurate results, including a detailed representation of the spreading of plastic zones, with a fairly limited number of elements.     

Multilayered shell finite element with interlaminar continuous shear stresses: a refinement of the Reissner–Mindlin formulation

A finite element formulation for refined linear analysis of multilayered shell structures of moderate thickness is presented. An underlying shell model is a direct extension of the first‐order shear‐deformation theory of Reissner–Mindlin type. A refined theory with seven unknown kinematic fields is developed: (i) by introducing an assumption of a zig‐zag (i.e. layer‐wise linear) variation of displacement field through the thickness, and (ii) by assuming an independent transverse shear stress fields in each layer in the framework of Reissner's mixed variational principle. The introduced transverse shear stress unknowns are eliminated on the cross‐section level. At this process, the interlaminar equilibrium conditions (i.e. the interlaminar shear stress continuity conditions) are imposed. As a result, the weak form of constitutive equations (the so‐called weak form of Hooke's law) is obtained for the transverse strains–transverse stress resultants relation. A finite element approximation is based on the four‐noded isoparametric element. To eliminate the shear locking effect, the assumed strain variational concept is used. Performance of the derived finite element is illustrated with some numerical examples. The results are compared with the exact three‐dimensional solutions, as well as with the analytical and numerical solutions obtained by the classical, the first‐order and some representative refined models. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

C0 REISSNER–MINDLIN MULTILAYERED PLATE ELEMENTS INCLUDING ZIG-ZAG AND INTERLAMINAR STRESS CONTINUITY

Concerning composites plate theories and FEM (Finite Element Method) applications this paper presents some multilayered plate elements which meet computational requirements and include both the zig-zag distribution along the thickness co-ordinate of the in-plane displacements and the interlaminar continuity (equilibrium) for the transverse shear stresses. This is viewed as the extension to multilayered structures of well-known C⁰ Reissner–Mindlin finite plate elements. Two different fields along the plate thickness co-ordinate are assumed for the transverse shear stresses and for the displacements, respectively. In order to eliminate stress unknowns, reference is made to a Reissner mixed variational theorem. Sample tests have shown that the proposed elements, named RMZC, numerically work as the standard Reissner–Mindlin ones. Furthermore, comparisons with other results related to available higher-order shear deformation theories and to three-dimensional solutions have demonstrated the good performance of the RMZC elements.     

A general methodology for deriving shear constrained Reissner-Mindlin plate elements

In this paper the necessary requirements for the good behaviour of shear constrained Reissner–Mindlin plate elements for thick and thin plate situations are re-interpreted and a simple explicit form of the substitute shear strain matrix is obtained. This extends the previous work of the authors presented in References 18 and 31. The general methodology is applied to the re-formulation of some well known quadrilateral plate elements and some new triangular and quadrilateral plate elements which show promising features. Some examples of the good behaviour of these elements are given.     

一个简明有效的四边形杂交/混合薄板弯曲单元

本文应用加权残量法基本原理,给出了建立杂交／混合元模型的简明列式,构造了四 边形杂交／混合（多变量）薄板弯曲单元ＱＰ１２元。该单元列式简明,采用自然坐标插值,保持了 坐标的几何不变性：形成单元刚度阵的各矩阵均推出了显式,不需作数值积分,从而避免了 高阶矩阵的求逆运算,提高了计算效率和精度。数值结果表明, ＱＰ１２元的应力、位移精度均 较高,对各种载荷工况和边界支承条件适应性强。