| Abstract: | A new eight-node quadrilateral shear-bending Reissner–Mindlin plate finite element for the very thin and thick plates without locking and spurious zero-energy modes is presented. The element has very good convergence characteristics both for thin and thick plates, is hardly insensitive to mesh distortions, and passes the patch tests. The formulation of the element is derived from a displacement variational principle and some general criteria to compute inconsistent transverse shear strains. These criteria have been applied with success to four- and eight-node quadrilateral plate finite elements and could be applied to construct triangular elements. The eight-node quadrilateral shear-bending plate finite element proposed has been found to be very efficient. |
