A NEW HYBRID QUADRILATERAL FINITE ELEMENT FOR MINDLIN PLATE

In this paper a new quadrilateral plate element concerning the effect of transverse shear strain has been presented. It is derived from the hybrid finite element model based on the principles of virtual work. The outstanding advantage of this element is to use more rational trial functions of the displacements. For this reason, every variety of plate deformation can be simulated really whilc the least degrees of freedom is employed.A wide range of numerical tests was conducted and the results illustrate that this element has a very wide application scope to the thickness of plates and satisfactory accuracy can be obtained by coarse mesh for all kinds of examples.