A highly efficient membrane finite element with drilling degrees of freedom

In this paper, the development of a new quadrilateral membrane finite element with drilling degrees of freedom is discussed. A variational principle employing an independent rotation field around the normal of a plane continuum element is derived. This potential is based on the Cosserat continuum theory where skew symmetric stress and strain tensors are introduced in connection with the rotation of a point. From this higher continuum theory a formulation that incorporates rotational degrees of freedom is extracted, while the stress tensor is symmetric in a weak form. The resulting potential is found to be similar to that obtained by the procedure of Hughes and Brezzi. However, Hughes and Brezzi derived their potential in terms of pure mathematical investigations of Reissner’s potential, while the present procedure is based on physical considerations. This framework can be enhanced in terms of assumed stress and strain interpolations, if the numerical model is based on a modified Hu-Washizu functional with symmetric and asymmetric terms. The resulting variational statement enables the development of a new finite element that is very efficient since all parts of the stiffness matrix can be obtained analytically even in terms of arbitrary element distortions. Without the addition of any internal degrees of freedom the element shows excellent performance in bending dominated problems for rectangular element configurations.