Static and Dynamic Analysis of Thick and Thin Isotropic and Composite Plates Using a New Triangular Element

Thei
submitted in partial fullment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

by

Partha Dey

Department of Applied Mechanics Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur Howrah 711 103 l 2004 India.

Certificate
THIS IS TO CERTIFY that the thesis entitled Static and Dynamic Analysis of
Thick and Thin Isotropic and Composite Plates Using a New Triangular Element,

being submitted to the Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur, by Partha Dey for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, is a record of bonade research carried out by him under our supervision, and that he fulls the requirement of the regulations for the doctoral degree. The results presented in this thesis have not been submitted to any other University or Institute for any degree or diploma.

Dr. D. Sengupta (Supervisor) Professor Department of Applied Mechanics Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur Howrah 711 103.

Dr. A. H. Sheikh (Joint Supervisor) Associate Professor Department of Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur 721 302.

Abstract

TRIANGULAR ELEMENT based on Reissner-Mindlins theory has

been developed for the analysis of isotropic and composite plates

of low to moderate thickness. The nal form of the element features six nodes (at the vertices and mid-sides of the triangle), each containing the ve usual degrees of freedom: in-plane displacements u and v, a transverse displacement w, and total rotations of the normal x and y . A seventh node at the centroid of the triangle is initially assumed (with the degrees of freedom w, x and y ) but later condensed to render the element simple and elegant. Complete quadratic polynomials have been used to represent u and v, a complete fourth order polynomial has been reserved for w, while complete linear polynomials approximate the shear rotations x , y . The key concept lies in choosing x and y to be the independent eld variables instead of x , y . This unique feature of the element enables a quartic deection and cubic rotations to be exactly represented with relatively fewer degrees of freedom, in effect bringing about a high level of accuracy with minimal computation. Moreover, the correct hierarchy of deection, rotation, moment and shear thus enforced, improves the general performance of the element and averts shear locking. In addition, the element passes the patch tests for constant moment, shear and twist, and is free from spurious modes. On the other hand, the model calls for the canonical criterion of C 1 compatibility, which has been left unsatised. In the nal analysis, a series of examples have been solved on deection and free vibration of isotropic and composite plates with excellent results. As regards problems on vibration, two mass lumping schemes have been proposed. The effect of rotary inertia has been considered in one, where the results, particularly for thick plates, are noted to improve remarkably.

Compliments I
N TRYING TO express my gratefulness to different people

who have directly or indirectly contributed towards this work of research, I nd myself faced with a severe but original problem. The rst is the point where to start from. Then there is to draw a line which should touch all and give sufcient weightage to each. In my view I nd intellect and research in the present day to be deeply linked to Galileo and the Greeks, to the Arabs and Aryabhatta in a straight way. But beneath the surface there exists a complement too. That is in the non-intellect so to say, or the unconscious researcher. The lineage starts from the worker who makes the tools and implements of research, pervades through the peasant who produces the grains that keep our body moving, turns around the serviceman who conducts and coordinates the social music of living, and enters right down the reptiles, amphibians, amoeba. . . to the atom of carbon which slowly but surely produced on earth if not somewhere else too the riddle of life and thought. A resort to convention is hence sought after as safer and better. But before one begins reciting, a small caveat : the fact that a combination of few words does not, nor even attempts to, repay in any way, the immense labour or part of their lives you may say, that these people have poured into mine, in helping this thesis come to being, might be connotative, but should not escape mention.

Sincere acknowledgements are due to

Dr. A. H. Sheikh,

my Co-Guide, who, from the Masters level ii

built up my condence as a researcher, virtually conceived the whole idea of the new element, set me at work to implement it, patted my back when I fared good, endured with me on critical occasions, shot up my spirits at times of despair, and of course without whom not only my research, but my whole academic knowledge, would not have been even half of its present state.

Dr. D. Sengupta,

my Guide in the entire research period, who praised me for my ndings, rebuked me when I was at fault, sometimes almost refuted me. . . it seemed, but nally accepted me with high vigour and through all that kept me on the track, discerning and developing.

Dr. B. N. Dutta, Dr. A. Ghosh, Dr. S. Talapatra, Dr. A. Dasgupta,

the Heads of the Department of my place of work at various phases of my Masters and Doctoral periods, who constantly endeavoured to provide the necessary working atmosphere for this tremendously tenacious job and helped me complete this research, may not be in due time (with none other than myself to blame), but very much in my preferred perfectionist manner.

Mr. M. N. Sarkar, Finance Ofcer, Dr. S. Dasgupta, Dean (Research) and Dr. A. Sengupta, Ex- Vice Chancellor of the University
for their kind attention and courteous help received from time to time in various aspects closely related to my research work.

The Council of Scientic and Industrial Research, New Delhi, for

the nancial support provided for most part of this research, and Bengal Engineering College (Deemed University), redeemed to a full-edged Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur, for hosting the whole academic activity and, in particular, furnishing a fellowship for one year prior to my Ph.D. registration.

I owe heartfelt gratitude to \ and Pijush for their warmth, encouragement and fellow feelings, and many big and small seless acts that helped this work to come to life.
Salilda, Mihirda

iii

and Bapi, who at vital hours, for days and months at length, struck off their part of the Ps from their PCs and made coding, computing and typesetting much easier for me.
Dibyendu

and Jahangir, Priyo and Saugata who hosted or cohosted my professional trips to Kharagpur and gave me the blend of absolute lonely and homely feelings that I lust for.
Anup

at my extended workplace who kept my blood warm and owing, and my mind crisp and lively amidst the biting coldness of the professional populace.
Katil da, Amit da, Malay da, Shamik

and Sandip da . . . Subhas da in the bigger world for their intellectual pedagogy and ideological guidance towards a world philosophy to which I yearn to belong and strive life-long.
Ananjan

\ My father and mother who brought me into being and gave me a priceless insight, my grandmother, who brought me up from childhood and taught me to love this world, and of course my grandfather, who not only fancied but also tried hard that my brother might become a Professor and myself a Doctor . . . somehow I chose not to, but. . . [sigh] tis thy day, ye old man ! \ and Mithu da among a multitude of near and dear ones to whom I owe my dynamic mundane being, and who collectively or individually, symphonically or in interludes have been, and keep on, solving my continuum equations in the nite time-space of life.
Ali da, Atiur, N eepa, Buddha, Rocky, Subhashis

Last but never the least :  Congratulations ought to be given to Mr. C. P. Gupta for putting to canvas the famous scientist in intimate conversation with his Other favourite instrument, and to Mrinal and N antu for digitally remastering the original;  Ms. Ratna Halder and Mr. Subhashis Bandopadhyay deserve some special thanks for their condence-giving suggestions regarding the Prologue ; and
A  L TEX, the beautiful typesetting package does need a real word of praise.

iv

To resolve
The gregarious mass of Labourers Whose body and forehead bears every stress Of a gigantic yet primordial Force of Capital And who

must but rise

Contents
Abstract Notations Prelude 0 Prologue
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 Nature and Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Science and Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structures and Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Finite Element Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i xii xv

1
2 3 10 13

1 Introduction
1.1 1.2 1.3 Finite Elements for Plate Bending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some Applicational Aspects of Plate Elements . . . . . . . . Perspective, Precept and Prospect of the Proposed Project . .

21
22 28 33

2 Review of Past Work

2.1 2.2 2.3 Development of Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Static Analysis of Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Free Vibration Analysis of Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

36
36 45 49

3 Mathematical Formulation
3.0 3.1 Basic Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Element Stiffness Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi

54
55 56

3.1.1 3.1.2 3.1.3 3.1.4 3.1.5 3.1.6 3.1.7 3.1.8

Degrees of freedom at the nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Area coordinates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Field variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relationship between coefcients of displacement and nodal displacements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stress strain relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rigidity matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Strain Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Energy principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57 57 59 61 62 63 65 66

3.2

Element Load Vector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3.2.1 Condensation of stiffness matrix and load vector . . . . . . .

67
68

3.3

Element Mass Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3.3.1 Mass lumping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69
70

3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7

Assembly into the Structural Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . Incorporating Boundary Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Governing Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Solution and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.7.1 3.7.2 Static analysis problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Free Vibration Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73 74 75 76
76 78

4 Results and Discussion

4.0 Preliminary Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.0.1 4.0.2 4.0.3 Patch test for uniform moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patch test for uniform edge shear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patch test for uniform twist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

79
80
81 82 83

4.1

Static Analysis of Isotropic Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.1.1 4.1.2 4.1.3 4.1.4 4.1.5 Simply supported square plate subjected to u.d.l. . . . . . . . Clamped square plate with a concentrated load at the centre Simply supported rectangular plate subjected to u.d.l. . . . . Square plate with one edge free subjected to u.d.l. . . . . . . Clamped skew plate subjected to u.d.l. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

84
85 88 88 91 93

vii

4.2

Static Analysis of Composite Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.2.4 4.2.5 4.2.6

95

Cross-ply square laminated plate subjected to sinusoidal load 95 Cross-ply square laminated plate subjected to u.d.l. . . . . . Angle-ply square laminated plate subjected to u.d.l. . . . . . Square laminated plate with different boundary conditions Skew laminated plated simply supported at its four sides . Triangular laminated plate clamped at its three sides . . . . 96 98 100 100 103

4.3

Free Vibration Analysis of Isotropic Plates . . . . . . . . . . . 105

4.3.1 4.3.2 4.3.3 4.3.4 4.3.5 4.3.6 4.3.7 Square plate simply supported on all four sides . . . . . . . Rectangular plate clamped on all four sides . . . . . . . . . . Square plate with one or more free edges . . . . . . . . . . . Skew plate simply supported/ clamped on all four sides . . Triangular plate simply supported/ clamped on all sides . . Simply supported square plate with a central cutout . . . . Rectangular plate carrying a mass at the centre . . . . . . . . 105 109 109 109 112 117 118

4.4

Free Vibration Analysis of Composite Plates . . . . . . . . . . 120

4.4.1 4.4.2 4.4.3 4.4.4 4.4.5 4.4.6 Simply supported cross-ply square laminated plate . . . . . Angle ply rectangular laminated plates . . . . . . . . . . . . Cross ply laminate having different boundary conditions . . Simply supported skew laminates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cantilever triangular plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Square laminate with a lumped mass at the plate centre . . . 121 125 125 125 129 129

5 Conclusion
5.1 5.2 5.3

135

Summary of the present work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Scope of future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Publications References

140 141

viii

Tables
4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Patch Test for uniform moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patch Test for uniform shear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patch Test for uniform twist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Simply supported isotropic square plate subjected to u.d.l. q . .
(a) Deection (100 wD/qa4 ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . . (b) Moments (10 Mx /qa ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . . . (c) Shear force (10 Qx /qa) at the mid-edge of the plate . . . . . . . .
2

82 82 84 86
86 87 87

4.5

Clamped isotropic square plate with a conc. load P at the centre

(a) Deection (100 wD/P a ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . . (b) Moments (Mx /P ) at the mid-edge of the plate . . . . . . . . . .
2

89
89 89

4.6

Simply supported isotropic rectangular plate subjected to u.d.l. q

(a) Deection (100 wD/q a4 ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . . (b) Moments (10 Mx /q a ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . . . (c) Moments (10 My /q a2 ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . . .
2

90
90 90 91

4.7

S-S-S-F isotropic square plate subjected to u.d.l. q . . . . . . . . .

(a) Deection (10 wD/q a ) at the middle of the free edge . . . . . . . (b) Moment (Mx /q a2 ) at the middle of the free edge . . . . . . . . . (c) Moment (Mx /q a ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . . . . . (d) Moment (My /q a2 ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . . . . .
2 4

92
92 92 92 93

4.8

Clamped skew plate subjected to u.d.l. q . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

(a) Deection (100 wD/q a ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . . (b) First principal moment (10 M1 /q a2 ) at the centre of the plate . . . (c) Second principal moment (10 M2 /q a ) at the centre of the plate
2 4

94
94 94 94

ix

4.9

Simply supported cross-ply laminate subjected to sinusoidal load 96 97

97 98 (a) Deection (100 E2 w/q a4 ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . (b) Moments (100 Mx /q a ) at the centre of the plate
4

4.10 Simply supported cross-ply square laminate subjected to u.d.l. q . . . . . . . . .

4.11 Simply supported angle-ply square laminate with u.d.l. q . . . .

(a) Deection (100 w E2 h3/q a4 ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . (b) Moments (100 M h /q a ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . .
2 2

99
99 99

4.12 Angle-ply and cross-ply square laminates with different b.c.s . 101
(a) Deection (100 w E2 h3/q a4 ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . (b) Moments (100 Mx h2/q a2 ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . (c) Moments (100 My h /q a ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . .
2 2

101 101 101

4.13 Skew laminate, simply supported and subjected to u.d.l. q

2 2

. . . 102
102 102 102

(a) Deection (100 w E2 h3/q a4 ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . (b) Moments (100 Mx h /q a ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . . (c) Moments (100 My h2/q a2 ) at the centre of the plate . . . . . . . .

4.14 Angle-ply and cross-ply triangular laminate subjected to u.d.l. q

(a) Deection (100 w E2 h /q a ) at three internal points of the plate . . (b) Moments (100 Mx h2/q a2 ) at the internal points of the plate . . . . (c) Moments (100 My h /q a ) at the internal points of the plate . . . .
2 2 3 4

104
104 104 104

4.15 Frequencies of a simply supported square plate . . . . . . . . 106

(a) Thin plate (h/a = 0.01) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (b) Moderately thick plate (h/a = 0.1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (c) Thick plate (h/a = 0.2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 107 108

4.16 Frequencies of a clamped rectangular plate . . . . . . . . . . . 110

4.17 Frequencies of a square plate with free edges . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.18 Frequencies of a skew plate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
(a) Simply supported edge condition

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

113 114

(b) Clamped edge condition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.19 Frequencies of a right triangular plate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

(a) Simply supported edge condition

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

115 116

(b) Clamped edge condition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.20 Fundamental frequencies of a square plate with a central cutout 117 4.21 Fundamental frequencies of an S-S-F-F rectangular plate with a mass at the centre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 4.22 Frequencies of a simply supported cross-ply square laminate 121
(a) Very thin plate (h/a = 0.00001) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (b) Thin plate (h/a = 0.01) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (c) Medium thick plate (h/a = 0.1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (d) Thick plate (h/a = 0.2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 122 123 124

4.23 Frequencies of a simply supported angle-ply rectangular laminate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

(a) Two layers (45/ 45) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (b) Ten layers (45/ 45/ 45/ 45/ . . . / 45) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 127

4.24 Frequencies of a cross-ply square laminate with free edges . 128 4.25 Frequencies of a simply supported cross-ply skew laminate . 130 4.26 Frequencies # of an angle-ply triangular laminate . . . . . . . 131
(a) Three layers (/ / ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (b) Five layers (/ / / / ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 132

4.27 Frequencies of a simply supported square laminate with a mass at the centre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
(a) Cross ply (0/ 90) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (b) Angle ply (45/ 45) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 134

xi

Notations
a, b, h ai , bi , ci Ai Aij , Bkl , Dkl A B C D E1 , E2 G12 G13 , G23 Gi Gi
lk

length, breadth and thickness of a plate

i = 1, 2, 3 area segments within the element triangle, i = 1, 2, 3 elements of D ,

i, j 1, 2, 6 or i, j 4, 5 , and k, l 1, 2, 6

1 1 1 cofactors of the elements in the ith column of x1 x2 x3 , y1 y2 y3

matrix relating and strain matrix matrix relating and rigidity matrix Youngs moduli along the local axes in-plane shear rigidity transverse shear rigidities global transformation matrix for the i th element
lk th element of Gi

k K Kij K Ki Ks Li L m, n me

shear correction factor element stiffness matrix before condensation partitions of K , (i, j ) (1, 1), (2, 1), (2, 2) element stiffness matrix after condensation condensed stiffness matrix for the ith element structural stiffness matrix the three area coordinates of a point (x, y ), i = 1, 2, 3 lower triangular Cholesky factor of Ks (when used together) number of mesh divisions along a, b mass of an element

xii

mij mkk Mx , My Mxy M M Ms n N x , Ny Nxy Oi p Pi Pl P P

i

ij th element of M , i, j 1, 2, . . . , 33 k th diagonal of M , k 1, 2, . . . , 30 bending moments on the xz and yz planes twisting moment element mass matrix in consistent form element mass matrix in lumped form structural mass matrix number of layers in a laminate ; total d.o.f.s of the plate in-plane forces along the x and y directions in-plane shear force zero row vectors of the same order as Pi , i = 1, 2, 4 number of elements in a plate row vectors containing polynomial of degree i, i = 1, 2, 4 row vector formed by expanding P4 to the order of R matrix relating u and row vector formed from the ith row of P , i = 1, 2, . . . , 5 transverse load distribution over the plate ; q q (x, y ) transverse shear forces on the xz and yz planes , i, j 1, 2, 6 or i, j 4, 5 elements of Q rigidity matrix of a single lamina along the local axes rigidity matrix of a single lamina along the global axes element load vector before condensation partitions of R , i = 1, 2 element load vector after condensation structural load vector transformation matrix for transformation of in-plane displacements in-plane displacements of the ith node, i = 1, 2, . . . , 6 in-plane displacements normal and tangential to the boundary of the plate sets containing the row/column numbers of M that correspond to the degrees of freedom u, v, w, x , y
Q Q

q Q x , Qy Qij Q Q R Ri R Rs T u, v ui , vi u n , ut U, V, W, X, Y

xiii

U u w wi X x, y, z xi , yi zk1 , zk i x , y i ij , ij , 12 , 21 n , t x , y x i , y i

strain energy vector containing the nodal variables u, v, w, x , y transverse displacement transverse displacement of the ith node, i = 1, 2, . . . , 7 interim vector used in the solution of equilibrium equation principal axes or directions ; also the coordinates of an arbitrary point within an element or plate coordinates of the ith corner of an element, i = 1, 2, 3 depth of the top and bottom surfaces of the k th lamina from the mid-surface of the plate coefcients of displacement, i = 1, 2, . . . , 33 vector containing coefcients of displacement partitions of , = u, v, w, x , y ber orientation of a lamina shear rotations of the normal on the xz and yz planes nodal displacement vector partitions of , i = 1, 2 area of a triangular element elements of , , (i, j ) (1, 1), (2, 2), (1, 2), (1, 3), (2, 3) elements of , , = x, y, xy, xz, yz strain vector for the laminate strain vector for a single lamina along the local axes strain vector for a single lamina along the global axes Poissons ratios along the local axes density of the material of the plate stress vector for the laminate stress vector for a single lamina along the local axes stress vector for a single lamina along the global axes frequency of a plate total rotations normal and tangential to the boundary of the plate total rotations of the normal on the xz and yz planes total rotations of the ith node, i = 1, 2, . . . , 7 xiv

Prelude T
HERE HAVE BEEN people around who kept asking me on

what topic I was doing my research. The only word I could utter, and what I used to think would be sufcient, was simply a plate. Soon I began to realise that the short word meant almost nothing to any of them even, without exaggeration, to one of my fellow researchers in a nearby department. What most of my friends seemed to be thinking was, whether the plate would be of chicken or of fried rice ! Initially the matter appeared surprising to me. Why should I not be able to convey to a layman the subject with which I am working ? But, thanks to my Guide, I was once explained how a fellow seeking to be a real Fellow is asked to choose his subject of research by his Guide-to-be. The man of knowledge rst asks him with what subject he has Graduated. More often than not he has to be prompted that its nothing more than Engineering. And from that point they start their rst search, the search for a research topic. Myself, a mere mechanical engineer, and my Guide, having sharpened himself in the Civil part of the spectrum, had virtually nothing in common but the vague sense carried by the word Engineering. From there resting not to despair, we started hunting for a small open eld in the huge forest of Journals and Conference Proceedings where we could launch our project of research. And evidently, we found a good one too : the plain, at, grand old plate. Recalling these stray incidents, I thought of writing out the entire address to where my research topic belongs starting from the general notions of the eld of engineering and ending up in a xv

little street map of where the plate is actually located. And all with a vision : so that any man of sense, to whichever part of the arch of knowledge he may belong to, should roughly be able to gure out what I am trying to establish in the course of my metamorphosis from an Engineer to a Doc tor. And the path of course could be none other than that of philosophie. Let a beam of uncompromising search for knowledge be dawned upon the branches of reality, and the tree of truth gure itself out from the grave darkness into which time has plunged humanity and his surroundings, and let the petals of a dream that people shall have absolute freedom and access to such knowledge bloom to its full.

Date :

...............
( Partha Dey)

To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. Tennyson, Ulysses.

AEV EX aV[ V` AE a][X aO AE+ ] [gWT ^X `[ aU GSTYP acX AE "`' a_X YTV[ Y_Y CP ={ZX [ L[ % [] FgJ KQ^ _G+_ JYO * *

Once in the far land lived a well to do Samrat ho wished to unite Mathematics with the Art Hence in a seminar on Art-d e-matic Pundits proposed theories so terrific That the king startled and his soul took depart. M

Chapter 0

Prologue

HILOSOPHY is perhaps a subspace where all subjects intersect.

The subjects which had started branching off after school level should by now have succeeded in stufng the student with sufcient knowledge in some branch of specialisation to have reached a oral season in the fractal space. The owers are now bound to share their grains of experience in order to proceed ourishing. One is hence summoned to philosophise ones journey transcription so that the well chosen and thoroughly researched trajectory appears conceivable to travellers in other parts of the tree of knowledge.

The author should not hesitate to make a confession here that his voyage bound for philosophy somehow gets stuck into the shallow waters of philology and there he develops a lustful love for a lady from the lofty land of literature by the name of Analogy.0 Sometimes the two get lost in the interplays of fantasy and reality, entailing snail-like love stories called allegories. But love is blind, they say, and knows no bounds either. So, by the time Temptation assails the two to a state of ecstasy, they nd themselves entwined in a trilogy of such gurative symbolisms. The present chapter has been numbered zero because . . . it
An exotic excuse : Researchers of stress analysis were alleged to have got entangled in a lattice analogy as early as 1906 where the continuum was replaced by a regular pattern of elastic bars [1]. The rudiments of the nite element method is often traced back to such anachronic love for the alluring beauty of Anlogy.
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says virtually nothing (or, put otherwise, everything virtual), and whatever it speaks of it does in a chain, in some roundabout way. The chapter however catapults again with a zeroth section from where man started his journey in time immemorial. The three successive sections risk a venture into a dreamy series of images with half known faces, or sometimes only their shadows, interacting in apparently unrelated sequences. The mystic haze in the mode of expression might be apparent, the implications are no doubt abstract, but the suggestions of links, similarities, likeliness and equivalence between aspects falling within the subject of the current research and those from the universal superset of knowledge could possibly be interpreted in the merit of the manifold impressions they leave on the locus of an unprejudiced, supple and integrable thought process following the chapter with a bit of diligent curiosity.

0.0 Nature and Man

Man has been confronting nature in its perplexing variety, motion and changeability since the earliest days of his evolution from the immediately lower species. What makes a man different from the chimpanzee or the dolphin, or a humming bird or some algae lies in his capability to modify nature to suit his needs. To wield the materials of nature and use its forces to his advantage, and not just consume them in their ready available form, is perhaps the most basic difference that identies him from a swarm of other creatures wandering about on the planet. Of course birds build nests very similar to the human huts of straw, and apes use sticks to crack nuts which they keep on crevices of trees quite like the stone age man, or, it might seem, in imitation of a cobbler or blacksmith or even a modern industrial worker. But these are at most very primitive modications of what lies bare in nature, and in most cases are either the simple use of one product of nature, almost unaltered, to extract from some other what is needed, or involve joining several of them to a minimal usable form. On the other hand, modications stretched to such

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levels of complexity so as to render the product unrecognisable from the forms in which they are found in nature, or it would be better to say fundamental transformation of natural resources, is what make up the primary activity of mans living. And in the act of doing so he has not only changed nature, but has developed himself too, slowly but incessantly, learning the art of this transformation throughout his life and through the ages. In his long, long journey of interaction with nature, man has had to set before him the tasks of observing his surroundings with a keen eye, break up all that lies before him into simpler elements, classify them according to their constitution into groups and subgroups, study each of the categories to its nest detail, and nd out the interrelations between the various elements or groups only to be able to apply the knowledge thus gained in changing them when and where and in the manner it is required. The study of nature from the perspective of knowing its characteristics, its behaviour or its nature, constitute what may be loosely called Science, whereas the activities aiming at the fullment of mans social and individual needs has clustered into a subject, developing with ever-increasing fervour in recent years, known to us as Engineering or Technology.

0.1 Science and Engineering

Laws and designs
The scientist studies nature in the form in which they truly exist, that is, with an objective outlook independent of the wishes of mankind. The aspects of reality are also dealt to their utmost generalisation in Science. For example, a law that claims to have discovered a force of nature and attempts to elucidate the manner in which they act on the material world should be able to explain every natural phenomenon, big or small, that fall within the domain of the law. Laws are declared valid only when prediction of eventualities approach, in their limit, an innite degree of accuracy, as conditions stated in the beginning of the law tend to be satised. In contrast, an engineer can never be so perfect in his designs.

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The measurement of the length of a rod so simple, or the time of an explosion however vital (say not fatal) are provided certain relaxations within which their magnitudes are allowed to err. This is because the engineers assignments are guided by specic needs arising from the subjective requirement of a person, a group or a society. The extent to which such designs succeed in fullling these requirements determine the grade or quality of the product. Thus, unlike in Science where a theory, required to hold in the entire premises of its relevance, is usually assessed on a true-or-false basis, engineering designs are normally judged by a better-to-worse scale, and that too only in the context of the particular objectives they aspire to achieve. To ascribe a more trendy set of adjectives to them, laws are digital or binary, while designs are analog or fuzzy.

A hazy analogy
Here, with a little blur, and a certain unavoidable tremour, an analogue from the better half of the world of knowledge the classical arts, may be superimposed on the scientic-technological realm of mans cognitive experience. In music, as it stands, rhythms, very much like scientic laws, must be exact in their occurrence, and are very general in application, appearing once here and repeating itself the next moment in another line or in some other song. Melodies on the other hand, like their engineering counterparts, have more freedom, and every tune, in turn, is apt to be different from the other. In visual arts too, scientic principles somewhat resemble the outline sketches of gures, objects and background details, whereas engineering designs may be thought to correspond to the colours accompanied by the light-and-shade and tonality in the picture.1 There are correct rhythms and wrong ones, but tunes are perceived as sweet or harsh; just as outlines mark clarity of objects in conformation with reality, while colours give expression to imaginations satisfying the craving of the human mind for the sense of beauty.
A similar analogy was presented by Tagore in his conversation with Einstein, where he compared the elements of melody and harmony in music with the lines and colours of a drawing [3].
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The geniuses at work

Paradoxically, the scientist resolving to study the objects around him has to take a highly subjective path. He taxes his brains in struggling to decipher the principles on which things appear to him to be working. When he succeeds in erecting such guidelines to the restless diversity of nature, it seems, like a well t rhythm or an excellently set composition, to provide the eternal backdrop for the ballet of sea waves in monsoon, swivering of trees in an evening storm or the blossoming of a ower in the silence of the night. The technician rather works the other way round. He rst xes a goal for himself which as such does not exist outside his consciousness, but has to be brought into reality by his craftsmanship upon nature. He then starts with a list of available materials, and with the help of a suitable principle of Science, arrives at some methodology by which things as they exist can be transformed into objects satisfying the requirement he is supposed to fulll. The modus operandi of the engineer is thus very much objective, in contrast to the requirement or source of inspiration being subjective. Our artist friend, the musician or the painter, similarly gets for herself a lyric or a landscape carrying with it an idea to be conveyed, or selects an abstract topic where a mood is to be revealed. The composer of art is here faced with the twin task, or seen from the other side, imbued with the double privilege, that she is at the same time a scientist and a technologist. She has rst to observe nature, study mankind in their intra-, extra- and inter-relationships to depict some aspects of these, true to its content, into a sketchy rhythm. The work begins with a trial-and-error process, gradually matures into a heuristic pattern of intuition, and as she develops delicate observation and rendering skills through prolonged practice and painstaking patience, her potential propensities proliferate and her perception of nature perfects itself into a profound sense of art. And now she is at full liberty to pour her imagination and feelings into the serene images on the canvas, drive her impulse, blow her emotions over the neat arrangement of intervals simulated by the drumsticks to give them a tinge of fantasia, a avour of the surreal.

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Working day and night with a series of harmonic frequencies related to each other (in the form of contrasting and contiguous colours from a palette, or consonant and slightly dissonant notes on a scale) she knits them in a sequence (of space or time) to concord to the rhythmic framework she has sketched. At last a fascinating piece of composition jumps to life : a Mozart sonata dances in the moonlight or an Ellora apsara relives in a nightmare with an alluring smile, which presents the connoisseur with a gift from nature, but having undergone a transformation in-and-out.

A leap of development
Taking a closer look at the work of the geniuses, a glimpse may be had of the formation of new ideas through rejection of the older ones, and the ongoing process of development taking place in these different streams owing between the objects of nature and the minds of the mortal. Researchers, of Science or of Arts, are overwhelmed by the unending variety and at the same time confused by the apparent chaos with which nature and its extant forms are reected in ones perception. One then tries to solve the maze in order to bring out the underlying essence imprisoned in the labyrinth of natural phenomena one rst comes across. To do this the mind often has to run about from one room of axioms to another, jump up dimensional platforms, climb down historical archives, break away century-old prejudices or swing over from one window of Mathematics or Fine Arts to another to get hold of the hidden truth, perspiring severely in the process. But what one gets at last is a deeper insight or clearer conception of the surroundings. In Science it may be a new law, perhaps a more generalised version of something known to him previously, or even a plausible explanation to some weird phenomenon bafing mans mind for generations. Often have such landmark discoveries opened up completely new branches of a subject, or started off new streams of thought. In the arts, such progress may be related to a changing art form or the birth of a new genre of music, with the newer one either being aesthetically simpler, symbolically deeper than the prevailing form, or capable of reecting a change in society, representing

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a movement in nature with more perfection. Thus has country or folk song given place to rock and the rap being products of fast life or embodying an element of equality in it, whereas portraits and panoramic landscapes have been replaced by the impressionists or cubists into more contemporary and highly abstract forms. The activities, whether of Science or of Arts, and what they lead to, are only representation of things essentially inherent in nature and as reected in ones mind. And a quantum of progress thus achieved may register a change that has taken place in the surroundings, or might be a more perfected version, or a radically different image of the same objects in an extruded mirror of the hypermind.

Behind the breakthrough

But how does an engineer develop his skill in designing ? Practice, observation and patience, spun into perseverance, might be a hurried answer. But patience, here too, could reveal a bit more. The author, in writing this piece of travelogue, had on several occasions, to hunt for an appropriate word to express a feeling that groped in his mind. For this a small pocket Thesaurus [4] came in handy. Even after use for several times, one never hoped to nd anything more than mere vocabulary in the process. But all of a sudden a realisation came to strike, that this is exactly what an engineer has to do throughout his professional career to nd out the correct materials and get hold of an appropriate theory by which a required design could be brought to work on earth ! So, before turning to the lengthy tables containing lists of never ending material properties much like the dictionary, or trying to go through the masquerade of symbols in intractable theories of structures as in a book of grammar, it may perhaps be wise to gloss over the rst few pages of the short Thesaurus, which, in addition to being a treasury . . . of words, could provide a little passage from its Introduction, revealing and enlightening in all respects. You turn to a dictionary when you have a word but are not sure enough what it means how it has been used and what it may

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be expected to do. You turn to the Thesaurus when you have your meaning already but dont yet have the word. It may be on the tip of your tongue, or in the back of your mind, or the hollow of your thought, but what it is you dont yet know. It is like the missing piece of a puzzle. You know well enough that the other words you try out wont do. They are not the right shape. They say too much or too little. They havent the punch or have too much. They are too at or too showy, too kind or too cruel. But the word which just lls the bill wont come, so you reach for the Thesaurus. Like the dictionary, it is a dangerous book in all sorts of ways. Sometimes you wake up after half an hour and realize that the problem of the missing word is still where it was. You have just been wandering happily about in the treasure house looking its riches over, forgetting what you came in for. It has worse dangers. Sometimes the words you nd start new streams of thought which wash everything out. Then not only the word but the idea too will be missing. . . . The space which opened up with Ali-babas open sesame closes upon itself, eluding the technocrat from success at rst attempt. Though only to show up somewhere else, into another world signifying the experience slowly gained by the engineers of a language, or their development in a novel eld of design, for instance. But when is a word our own? What is a mastery of language? How in fact do we acquire a vocabulary worthy of the name ? The answer of course is: By experience with words, by living with great books and good talkers, by watching their words at work and at play in brief, by becoming familiar with words. Mere acquaintanceship with them is not protable here. An acquaintance is one whose name and face you know, without more than a rough idea of ones being and business. A familiar is one about whom you know as much as possible. Words are astonishingly like people. They have characters, they almost

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have personalities are honest, useful, obliging. . . or treacherous, vain, stubborn. . . . They shift, as people do, their conduct with their company. They are an endless study in which we are studying nature and ourselves at that meeting point where our minds are trying to give form to or take it from nature. To preserve the dignity of the long literary rhetoric, its signicance and similarity to a designing engineer is being left for the reader to dismantle.

Fade out . . .
Having acquired an acquaintance of the engineers perspective world view upto this point, with the scientist seated in front of him and the lady of arts on the third side of the table facing the wall adorned, say, with the painting of a primitive dance the candles may be put off for tonight and the two bid adieu for the present. We could meet again . . . soon, is all they say to each other. And they must, as familiarity and much more awaits to be attained.

. . . Focus in
For an engineer, however, being familiar is synonymous to being specic with respect to his point of interest. Mechanics of structures is, by choice of destiny, or through combinations of will of intent and factors of chance, the subject of research of the present author. To spare a plunge into the pool of structures to get a better view of the inlaid elements, would, thus, not be quite out of place here. A sharp change in the nature of view may be implicit from the replacement of eye-piece : from a birds eye view to one obtained by a sh-eye lens. The inherent distortion of the lens, marked by an apparent stretch at the centre and space condensed outwards, should not be taken more seriously than getting a look at the topic of plates with as much detail as possible within a limited scope. The wobbly effect of the waves in water may either be overlooked or taken as yet another rhetoric in cross product with the others.

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0.2 Structures and Plates

The melting pot
Machines both big and small, from the tiny workshop in the courtyard to the enormous factory sheds of large industrial towns which are either their cradle giving birth to many such machines anew everyday, or are employing them for the further production of the most diverse kind, be it the simplest or the most complicated, mechanical, electrical or nuclear none of them can certainly survive without the plain and simple component known as plate.

Family photograph
Of course a plate will nd its simplistic younger brother in the beam and a bit-more-matured elder sister in the shell, and the trio together with a three dimensional solid mother make up the family of structures. But man being a three dimensional creature feels comfortable with things which are of one dimension less than him. This is because he can easily see a at thing without turning it around. Thus, given to design a structure for some specic purpose he will be ready to switch from a one dimensional beam to a two dimensional plate with the slightest provocation, but will retain the at prole as long as possible, and will only, with a certain unwillingness and in the most stubborn of compulsions, agree to part with it and opt for a surface curved in the third dimension such as a sphere, and not to say, try his utmost to avoid a structure so intricately solid as a sculpture however esteemed they may be in their artistic interpretation. He very well knows that not only can he see the whole plane of the plate at one glance, undistorted, but also draw it exactly on his paper notesheet in one single gure, cut a hole in it, trim it to his desired size, photograph it with the nest accuracy, view the picture leisurely or zoom in as much as he likes on his PC window. That is what Gamow [5] in his excellent treatise on Mathematics and Cosmology convincingly demonstrated with the example of how an ant moving over a M obius band thinks the length of the strip to be double its actual length because the ant being a mere

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three dimensional creature, normally does not cross the edge of the paper strip twisted once in the third dimension, and not easily perceptible by the ant, to reach the point from where it started after completing two rounds one on the outside of the ring, which automatically leads to the inside surface because of the twist. Perhaps a similar reasoning may be found lying beneath the age-old obsession of man for the second dimension in, say the belief of the people before Columbus that the earth must be a at plate, or the historical development of paintings and maps before sculptures were ever carved or globes designed.

A rational choice
The poor ant and the fteenth century men might have been grossly wrong in estimating the dimensions of such mundane or celestial objects but the map-maker and painters two dimensional projections were very much relevant and are still practiced to a wider extent than their 3D representations. Moreover engineers are in an advantageous position that they are not given to predict the length or shape of things which really exist, as an Astronomer or Geologist does, but are interested in constructing devices for specic requirements. So one will nd a lot of articles in daily use which are at and has simple geometric shapes. A table, a chair, beds meant for the man or the machine, the computer cabinet, the really at TV screen . . . all of them will be noticed to have semblance to the classical shape known as plate. Though today many of these objects are losing their simplicity and are warping themselves in some sort of dance tuned to the music of the day, still most of the changes are just slight variations of the age old designs, and even others, as in the last example, are gaining a at face from their older curved ones. There are of course situations where special streamlined shapes are very necessary, specially in marine and aerodynamic applications, but there too plates have their own place in aeroplanes and in helicopters as wings and blades, as decks and oors of ships and submarines, and as machine chassis and control cards in every mechanical or electronic gadget. In short all simple structures are mostly comprised of at plate-like elements, and

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the complex structures are bound to have simpler sub-structures, many of which again tend to be at and resemble the plate.

An experts view
There is alongside another profound reason why more researching eyes are turned towards the plate than on any other member of the family. Mathematically speaking, all of them the beam, the plate and the shell, bear the same genetic structure as their mother : they deform and come back to shape according to the basic laws of elasticity which express itself as a fourth order differential equation for continuum mechanics. But working with extra dimensions, as in applying three dimensional elasticity relations to a one dimensional beam or a two dimensional plate, shoots up the number of variables and swells the volume of calculations by an enormous proportion. Just as no one would prefer Einsteins theory of relativity to predict whether a billiard ball will reach the pocket or not Newton may be thanked thrice for his trinity of laws which apply very well for velocities much less than that of light. Analysis of beams likewise works quite well with their reduced form of differential equations where there is no scope of a stress in the transverse direction to interfere with the primary concerned variable the axial stress or strain. This gives very good results with most beam problems and the search for better elements or rened mathematics in beam analysis may be made only in case one has a special passion or obsession for it. Analysis of solid structures on the other extreme involves implementation of 3D elasticity equations without any basic alteration whatsoever. Minor aspects like boundary conditions or orientation of the elements may require a little meditation in such case, but a 3D element may be conveniently formulated from the general elasticity equation without much difculty, leaving little ground for development in the element level or even less of the assumptions on which they are based.

Analogy revisited
The beam and the solid are like a primary school student and his mother having their respective tasks to be done by the end of the

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day. One is simply concerned with his school homework, the rest of the time left for him to play at large or do whatever he likes. The latter however, has to handle her household duties, bring up the children, educate them, and keep herself up, and in doing so she has to divide the family earnings suitably among various sectors of life. The network may appear complicated to a beginner, but once understood may be rigorously followed as a routine, in the sense that she has little in hand that can be altered or neglected in order to run a system successfully. The plate in contrast, and the shell too in many respects, are like the high school boy or a college going lady in their teenages just having stepped into adolescence. He or she has started realising that the world is not so simple or straightforward, but the nascent maturing brain is yet unable to cope up with its complexity. An extra dimension has opened up before the young member and one is left at a loss wandering hither and thither, unable to decide which path to take, what are the vices to be avoided, and what should be the goal in life to which one needs to orient oneself. And it is at this stage that the bright teenager is vulnerable to all pitfalls and ill-conditioning of behaviour if not guided properly. The engineer in his wonderland ponders over which variables should be eliminated and which taken to what degree of approximation, and what should be the governing equation for his model of the plate so as to get the best solution to a problem. For some isolated cases usually featured by simple boundary conditions and symmetric loading proles, solving the differential equation directly can give very precise and accurate solutions. But for specic tailored needs such closed form solutions are hardly available or even feasible at all. One is then, but left to wander in the dust of a dark dusk.

0.3 The Finite Element Method

In search of light
Researchers of Structural Mechanics have tried out different methods to circumvent difculties appearing before them in plate analysis. Some have crunched out the equations, annihilated variables and chopped off terms to obtain solutions to particular types

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of problems. Others have relied on totally different assumptions springing up from remote considerations thought to be redundant in framing the general plate equation, and arrived at queer solutions through introduction of slack variables to analyse problems in an eccentric region of the subject. Sometimes solutions have been made easy and accurate by limiting their scope to some specic areas, at other times perfection and simplicity have been sacriced to address problems at greater generality. The equations that have evolved in time have taken different masks and make-ups and light of solution has been thrown on them from different angles and at varying intensities; development in both cases have been dictated by tools available from mathematicians either analytic or numerical.

Change in the sets

Quite dramatically, as one might expect, in the middle of the last century the drama of the plate was moved from the Greek stadium of Newtono-Leibnitzian Calculus, struck with primeval torches of re which ickered so much that it became very difcult at times to separate one character variable from the other, and was brought to the modern sta ge installed inside the au di tori um and studded by stupendous oodlights and focused spotlights ltered through suitably coloured discs to match the requirement of the context. Interestingly, this historic shift was made possible neither through the spirals of development in Mathematics, nor by the jugglery of levers in Mechanics, but with a change of scenario brought about by the single little invention of electronics the Computer. Lights of great luminosity were obtained from the speed of electronic computation and a small magnetic disk was revealed to have million times more memory space than a paper of the same size, which made huge calculations involving tens of thousands of variables possible within seconds and with as high accuracy as sixteen signicant gures. The dramatis person of the differential equation now dazzled with excellence as every subtle expression could now be acted upon and understood to the minutest detail, and the playwright and director the structural analyst and the designer dangled in enthusiasm as they could bring into their new form of

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analysis every aspect of the social structure with the most truthful representation.

Experiment with forms : wider context

The new stage on which design of structures began to be performed was called Finite Element Method. It made its appearance with huge possibilities of research and immense amount of work to be done in the Mathematical and Engineering elds before the new tool was to be established as a successful form for analysis of structures. Equations had to be recast, functions were chosen with more freedom, and the solution technique used was radically different. The Greek goddess of unsolvable differential equation no more haunted the dreams of the designer her incarnation in any shrewish boundary condition could now be satisfactorily tamed by some or the other Petruchian element. A strange paradox enhanced the problem solving capability of the modern nite element analyst by a double fold. The innitesimal Calculus approach was a continuous, conventional, conservative way for solving any elastic equation, but was unfortunately applicable only to some denite, discrete problems of the simplest kind; the nite element procedure used a brisk break-up of the structure into mostly disconnected elements in the shape of bricks or tiles, pinned or nailed at a few chosen nodal points, but in turn achieved immense success in cajoling and coaxing any damn continuum with the most complicated shapes and the worst boundary conditions.

The comedy of bugs

However still, mischievous anti-heroes managed to creep into the computer scripts through the hands of some comical characters apparently lacking common sense, and results of seemingly rational elements were frequently observed to diverge or asymptotically approach abnormal values. Such was, for example, the idiosyncrasy of an epileptic shear locking phenomenon when plates became exceedingly stiff and failed to register any deection on reducing its thickness beyond a certain limit. Or, take the somnambulist syndrome

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of zero energy modes causing the structure to move about precariously or rotate in space without any stress being developed in it. But these could hardly discourage the analyst : whether neuro- or psycho-, but in anyway logical causes of such mysterious behaviour were soon found lying in a certain mathematical assumption either neglected or incorporated disproportionately, or in a numerical approximation attributed asymmetrically or not carried out to completion within its degree. Treatments were accordingly suggested with sufcient success in removing the specic deciencies.

The show goes on

Bottlenecks arising in numerical analysis of structures being thus throttled to a great extent and the mathematics behind the assumptions being better interpreted physically, the researcher began turning to problems hitherto unsolvable by analytical methods with a vision of expanding its frontiers to the unsailed, fathomless seas. Here the author must beg the pardon of the reviewer and the general reader to allow him to rave the analogy of the drama to the boundary of a belief that all problems in plate analysis has its true replica in the literary form and perhaps some of them may even be solved by a play-critic if a structural engineer fails to do so.

Debugging tragedies
With pleasing consent one may be invited to an imagery where an excited youth calling back home from his place of interview to give the message of his new appointment, suddenly hears the news of his mothers expiry. His face, half struck with grief at the tectonic jerk, is unable to resist a tear or two drip down the cheek, and as the light dims on that side of the face yet sparkling the tear, the other half remains illuminated till the frozen signs of a smile gradually fade away and nally die out with the telephone receiver iteratively dropping down his hands, wrists, elbow. . . to the ground. Storms gush into the room, curtains utter as the power fails abruptly. The nascent rising moon, partly diffused by the clouds, glides in through the window and gleams on the face of the receptionist. She asks him not to be anxious as the lights will be coming in soon. But

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sarcasm nds its peak time to pounce on the ladys words the sky cracks open to let in blinding light, and the man, dwarfed by his shadow, seems to resonate with shocking contrast of emotions as he is completely silhouetted by the lightning and bewilderment of thoughts. Transliteration of such a puzzling situation may be found in nite element literature by the name of crack-tip problems. Singularities arise at the end points of a crack inside a continuum and special quarter-point elements may be devised to behave in a specic way to suit the peculiarity of the problem. Such and many other similar situations that arose in designing structures or in analysing physical phenomena were skillfully solved with the new tool of nite element analysis the problems on non-linearity, random vibration, heat exchange, friction and uid ow to name a few.

Cast
Having dealt at length with the topographical characteristics of the region in which the plate dwells among its kinsfolk and narrating one or two habitual jobs done by it and sometimes shared by the other members too, and with a prolusion on the recent passion it seems to pursue with emphatic vigour, an introductory account a rough sketch of life in the valley, may be had from it. But before starting an excursion into the rows and avenues of plates which will lead itself to a close up of the apartment and nally into the cupboard where the present brand of plate and the thesis bearing testimony to its research may be placed and appropriately catalogued, it might be the right occasion to return once more to the allegory already showing its stress marks, only to recall the popular observation of the noted dramatist William Shakespeare : All the worlds a stage, And all men and women merely players, . . . And one man in his time plays many parts. At the time Shakespearean dramas were written, women rarely offered themselves to act on stage. So it was the current custom to extend the substitution beyond the age dimension and into the gender regime, so that young lads prior to their adolescence and not yet

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having attained the coarse manly pitch, were given to play the roles of ladies. Perhaps it may not be proper to roll the transformation off the professional stage, and into the danger region of the pubs of some so-called developed country, or in a movement recently gathering momentum primarily through the focus of the global media and presented as if to have a genuine source of bisexuality in the general human physiology. Hence, leaving the problem aside for the moment, hopefully to be solved by a more in-depth investigation, and the solution supposed to converge in a society where human identity would perhaps need to be redened, the journey may be given a right turn to the arena of structures once more. Here, within the factor of safety granted to engineering designs, it may be stated, with sufcient evidence in nite element texts, that one of the simplest yet modest methods in construction of shell elements, happening to be the most difcult and complicated kind of element, is to extend the plate bending element to accommodate curvatures in geometry and couple the existing transverse stresses to in-plane membrane stresses with proper care. Very similarly a three dimensional solid structure may be comfortably modelled by coherent layers of a suitable plate element with some simple renements. Such kinds of transformation may extend the capability of the plate bending element beyond its apparent, usual scope of applicability.

So, as the Greeks marvelled that the world is made of triangles, or in the footsteps of Pythagoras view that there were not ve elements that made up the earth (as was then believed) but only one : numbers, should the present researcher ridicule himself in trying to establish such childish notion that plates, or plate elements, can perform magic and enter upon the analysis of any wild structure to get the desired results? Nay, such fallacious argument is not exactly what he wishes to propound. Rather a later experience in bounded innite series may be considered more appropriate in this respect. Plates do have a wide, perhaps widening range of application and plate elements may as well be tted to problems other than those which strictly look like plates, but not to any random structure as

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such. Additionally, care and precautions are certainly necessary in transferring their predicability from one subset of structures to another even slightly different structure. But that in no way negates the substantial argument that new experiments are welcome, brave adventures need to be extolled, and ingenious elements must be contrived to get the most out of concepts, so rich and exquisite, developed with intense attention and imagination of such esteemed researchers . . . to whom reverence falls due.

Post Script
In one way the steps trailed in the zeroth chapter have been traced back in the forthcoming rst. From another aspect the former was too general, abstract and lacked clarity; the following, in contrast, is much more specic, concrete and unambiguous. But still it is likely that someone will nd the Introduction boring, plain narrative, a mere tautology, . . . just as one having gone through the Prologue might have felt irritated because of its abstruseness, impalpability and irrelevance.
So, should it be worth noting that zero es and one s have their own places in the group or eld theory, or even in simple arithmetic ? For instance, every Mathematician will denitely be indebted to the concept of zero forwarded by our old Aryabhatta. Much in a manner as 2. . two, three, four and a one shows the way to its immediate followers. so on both in arithmetic and in this doctoral thesis. Another observation, possibly a bit more serious and valuable too, relates or is concerned with the relationships prevailing in the situation of research in its entirety. In trying to order up the research activity that has taken place in his sphere of interest and orient them to some single, or at least a few, denite direction(s) of development, the task appeared, as greater depths were penetrated, even more difcult.
2

That, having one thing rst and then another amounts to having two things,

(or, put simply, 1 + 1 = 2) was quite easily displayed (QED) by Russell [6] in less than fty pages after about some hundred pages of qualitative and quantitative denitions ! Nevertheless, i.e. whether one appreciates such mind-boggling abstract proofs or not, it has to be admitted that this fundamental operation on the rst natural number forms the basic building block for getting the higher numbers. . .

C H : 0. P ROLOGUE

20

Surrender seemed to be the only plausible refuge. But notwithstanding such failures, the fact that development has taken place remains obvious and undisputed. The question, then, may be framed as: what is the measure of this development, where does it lead to ? Perhaps direction is not to be sought, but the volume of work covered and the intricacy with which research has progressed, is to be taken into account here. A paradigm that best describes such observational crisis, both in the negative and positive implications, is the phenomenon of chaos [7]. Negatively, nding directions of development in a chaotic situation is meaningless, because it is susceptible to proceed along every path it nds suitable for advancing. Analogies of such fractals or manifolds may be found in nature in the form of clouds, trees or evolution of species. But nature, fortunately, has also a mechanism for selection of higher forms of self-organisation. She seems to express her preference to these developed forms by providing a more conducive atmosphere for them to survive and multiply. Man is the highest form of organised matter yet known (to him of course), and that too to such a degree that he is not only able to view these laws, analyse them and undertake experiments in building and rebuilding nature, but is also in a position to apply them over himself and his various activities. So, isnt a slightly higher form of self-organisation possible ? For the society in general to allow man to live in harmony, in peace, and nurture his creative skills, and particularly in choosing his research topics, maintaining a better communication among researchers so as to avoid repetitions and make their works more coherent ? Can order not raise its head among, and damp out, all the chaos prevailing in scientic-technological research, in society, and in the most different forms of interaction between man and nature taking place in a little corner of this beautiful cosmos ? We know not, yet How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man? ... ... ... The answer, . . . is blowing in the wind.

says Dylan,

And it is left unto us to grasp it; for, until then mankind will remain just another product of nature bearing the label of homo-sapien.

Chapter 1

Introduction

used widely and with great success in the design and analysis of structures. The impetus was originally provided by the entry of the computer onto the bigger stage of the world which soon made its place on the designers table. Plummeting cost, leaping speed and inating capacity of the computer in the last few years and the associated development in supporting software has, on one hand, enabled the structural engineer to design with little effort large and complicated structures in the industry. On the backstage, however, it modestly invites and inspires the nite element researcher to carry on his experiments with ever more vigour and develop new elements that would perform better in terms of accuracy, generality and robustness. To devise nite elements for the analysis of plates, particularly in the plate bending domain, has remained an active area of research. No single element has been reported [9, 10] to have emerged as the so called best or comprehensive enough for the entire range of applications. This provides the background and motivation to the present researcher in his search for a new concept in framing a general purpose, efcient and elegant element. The present research revolves round the development of a new element for the analysis of plate bending problems. A conceptual outline of the proposition awaits the reader in the last sec-

HE

F INITE E LEMENT M ETHOD is denitely a powerful tool

21

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

22

tion of this chapter (with more details presented in chapter three). The previous two sections deal with the historical inheritance in plate bending nite elements (reviewed more vividly in the second chapter) and goes on to touch a few aspects related to static and vibrational characteristics of isotropic and composite plates the problems which have been solved (in various sections of the fourth chapter) for the validation and assessment of the proposed element.

1.1 Finite Elements for Plate Bending

The number of elements developed for analysis of the plate bending problem over the last forty years, or even the different classes into which these elements may be grouped, is ineffably large. Research on the subject has been carried on by an increasing number of research workers, and the corners to which these studies have ushered represent an expanding horizon, almost impracticable to be covered from the single view point of a lone watcher. An endeavour has been made in this section to trace, somewhat generically, a few of the major directions into which a massive part of the research has moved, and supplement it with some relevant theoretical standpoints revealed side by side.

D EVELOPMENT OF E LEMENTS
Birth of the nite element method took place in the womb of the aerospace industry just half a century ago. 1953 witnessed at least one such publication [11] and notes one suggestion [12] involving the use of nite elements in modelling delta wings of an aircraft. Company policies on one hand delayed or denied the publication rights of many similar works. On the other, nite element research was still in want of a good tutor of Mathematics, in the absence of which work had to mainly progress through rough engineering intuition and loose physical corroboration. It took ten years to erect itself on a rm theoretical foundation. In 1963, three years after its christening took place in the hands of Clough [13], it was realised

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

23

that the method corresponds to the determination of the local minima of the functional of a variational eld, giving rise to the principle of minimum potential energy in case of structures undergoing deformation. Such deduction, though made as early as 1943 from the part of Mathematicians [14], was sheerly overlooked and only recognised later by the engineering society to be its mathematical basis after having independently developed the same. In anyway, formulation of the basic theory for the nite element method inspired huge amount of research in the decade of the 1960s to be directed towards development of new elements and their application to different elds of engineering. The earliest nite elements were developed for plane stress and plane strain problems. It was not long after, that the promising procedure was implemented for the analysis of plate bending. The earliest in record was one by Adini and Clough [15] appearing in 1960. They worked on a four noded twelve degree of freedom rectangular element based on Kirchoff s hypothesis. A paper [16] presented at the First Conference on Matrix Methods in Structural Mechanics held at Ohio in 1965 attempts to sum up the experience from three of the earliest plate bending elements with their inherent immaturities of childhood. All the three elements discussed were triangular, non-conforming elements. Convergence to correct results could not be obtained in two of them, of which one even fails the patch test. The third, in spite of its non-conformity, converges correctly ; however, an isolated problem of geometric anisotropy remained which precluded its application to certain shapes. Fullment of the compatibility criteria posed a challenging problem in the case of plate bending elements developed according to the Kirchoffs hypothesis. The reason was that they required C 1 conformity to be satised across interelement boundaries owing to the presence of second order derivatives of the eld variable w in the variational equation. Conformity was however more easily attained for rectangular shaped elements as evident from a paper [17] presented in the same Conference in 1965. But the situation appeared quite difcult in case of triangular elements. Subsequent research chased the conformity requirement from all possible sides but the

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

24

golden deer managed to slip away most of the time, eluding the nite elementers rm grip. Occasionally, when the target seemed to have been achieved, the price paid was often more severe in the form of too stiff or too exible an element affecting the results seriously, or ones requiring greater degrees of polynomial shape functions thus reducing the efciency of the element. Of all the various paths traversed in search for an efcient element for a general plate bending problem, some were found leading to blind alleys, but most of them are still active in the development of new elements or through grafting with one another. One of these tracks has given birth to a class of elements known as the isoparametric element. The special exibility that these elements offer is their capability to represent curved boundaries through a geometric curvilinear mapping. Most of the elements developed according to this technique were based on the Mindlins plate theory where rotations of the normal x and y were usually assumed as separate functions independent of the transverse deection w. This reduced the continuity requirement to the C 0 level as the derivatives of the eld variables in the governing differential equation went upto the rst order. But in return it affected the element with tendencies of shear locking in case of very thin plates. There were also problems regarding the extrapolation of stresses from Gauss points. Another kind of element tacks its course from the conventional displacement type model to include stresses as its degrees of freedom, giving rise to hybrid or mixed approaches. In combating the cumbersome problem of compatibility an essential cornerstone of Mathematics had to be replaced. It resorted to an alternative variational principle the principle of stationary complementary potential energy, which assumed an independent stress eld satisfying equilibrium conditions within the element in addition to the displacements assumed in a manner so as to obey the compatibility criteria at the element edges right at its level of formulation. Later, the Hellinger-Reissner principle was used to formulate many popular hybrid stress elements. Researchers have evolved a series of close shades and variations of this method, but the elements they

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

25

yielded generally suffered from ailments ranging from deciencies in rank of the element stiffness matrix leading to symptoms like hourglass (i.e. zero energy) modes, or disagreement in kinematic boundary conditions producing incoherence in results, and posed recurrent problems in choosing the stress functions or distributing the applied load at the nodes. Overall, the implementation of the method was so highly drenched in complexity that in spite of many distinctive contributions towards its simplication and the clarication of underlying principles, these breed of elements were found to be not so fruit bearing as was fancied at the time of its inception. Techniques like reduced or selective integration were devised which received wide recognition in its capability to handle the problem of shear locking. But as one problem was eliminated, another the zero energy modes crept into the elemental behaviour. These modes were in their course stabilised through different methods like assumed strain or addition of hourglass stiffnesses. On a broad scale such investigations and modications removed the preliminary problems of compatibility, zero energy modes or shear locking, but the piecewise attacks left their trails in the form of occasional erratic behaviour of the elements, when used as a single element or in amalgamation to a mesh, in case of warped shapes or for seemingly simple structural solutions, or even in the benchmark patch tests. In the context of such delirious rambling among the meanders of tweedledom and tweedledee, a late recourse was taken by a section of researchers into the ravines embracing the gorge of incompatibility. The continuity and smoothness which was so painstakingly achieved was set aside and the crevasse was once more laid bare for reconnaissance. The negation of the earlier nonconformity was negated again not in its navete of incapability, but with a grandeur of expertise leading into the raving valleys of large elastic strains, geometric non-linearity and incompressibility of the material. The exploratory probes [18, 19, among others] were prompted by an earlier incompatible element [20] labelled QM6. In one of these works [21] an incompatible modes element was developed through the enhanced assumed strain approach where the

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

26

Hu-Washizu variational principle provided the necessary basis. It was later established through a series of research papers [21, 22, 23] by different authors that the three methods of incompatible modes following the displacement approach, the assumed stress hybrid method, and the enhanced assumed strain method were equivalent to one another if certain conditions were satised, and that the same element could be derived starting from different principles.

T HEORETICAL C ONSTRAINTS
In whatever manner an element may be formulated, the principal objective behind the design of any nite element is to properly represent some structural behaviour in a model built up by it, and ensure convergence of results produced by a mesh of the element to the actual results. The task of determining an appropriate set of minimal conditions that would guarantee convergence has bothered nite element researchers for a long time. The more mathematical minded among them have imposed criteria stating (ref. 24, p.126) that, within an element the eld variable ( , say) must contain a complete polynomial of degree m (m being the highest order of derivatives of appearing in the variational equation), and that there must be continuity of and its derivatives through order m 1 across interelement boundaries ; and nally, if the elements are used in a mesh where the boundary conditions are appropriate to a constant value of any of the mth derivatives of , then each element must come to display that constant value as the mesh is rened. The physicists perspective point of view differs slightly from this. It resorts to the principles of mechanics and brings into effect the play of forces in addition to the compatibility criterion, which is also analysed to a further breakup (ref. 24, p.124). Compatibility, it says, must be satised within elements and at the nodes, but not necessarily across interelement boundaries; equilibrium, on the other hand, may not prevail within elements or across interelement

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

27

boundaries, but nodal forces and moments should be in equilibrium. The conditions that remain unsatised, it maintains, should however tend to be met as the mesh is rened ad innitum. Concerningly, as elements kept being constructed, satisfying one condition after another, convergence hardly seemed to increase in simple relation to obedience. Particularly in case of Kirchoff plate elements, the crucial criteria of C 1 compatibility seemed quite elusive. Irons and Draper [25] came up with a proof that no polynomial shape function could satisfy both the conformity requirements of displacement and slope along interelement boundaries. So a pragmatic approach needed to be formulated that would provide, apart from all puritanism, just the requisite quorum for convergence of a general nite element model. The task fell on the shoulders of engineers. The irony here lies in the fact that the credit for fabricating such a test of tyranny for elements in structural mechanics again goes to Irons, who jointly with Razzaque proposed the patch test [26] which is today unanimously considered by nite element researchers to be both necessary and sufcient in evaluating the acceptability of a newly developed element. The test considers a small patch or assembly of elements which contains at least one node inside it (that is shared by more than one element) and has some amount of interelement boundary. A constant value of each of the elementary stress components moment Mx , transverse shear Qx , and twist Mxy in case of plate bending are separately applied to the token structural patch. The values of deection (or stresses) thus obtained must agree with the theoretically calculated values within the limit of truncation error emanating from the nite length of the computer word containing the variables. If an element passes the patch test in the above manner, it may be well assured that a structure modelled with the element will show convergence to correct results for any arbitrary distribution of stresses encountered in a practical situation. However, the actual test of endurance for an element consists in its capability to solve practical problems where not only the

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

28

loads and boundary conditions applied over it vary, but different dimensional and material parameters also come into the scene. Thus there arises the need to consider the practical aspects of a plate as well, before any nite element study may be regarded as complete and comprehensive.

1.2 Some Applicational Aspects of Plate Elements Relevant to the Present Research
Plates of various materials and dimensions nd a wide range of uses varying from the household dining table or cupboard shelf to a machine chassis, crane base or control card in the industry, and inbetween in infrastructural elements such as a bridge or ship deck, submarine oor or the wings and blades of an aircraft or helicopter. Different aspects of the plate, though not completely independent of one another, may be given a short attention under separate heads. Metals and alloys enjoy the majority in constituents of structures right from the Bronze age to the present day. Recent research in materials technology is however bringing about a massive shift of focus to a stronger and lighter class of materials generally known as ber reinforced plastics or composites. The introduction of composite materials, intrinsically weak in shear, has magnied the need for consideration of transverse shear effects in the plate theory. Even thick isotropic plates when modelled without taking shear into account, is liable to underestimate deection and overpredict frequencies. Depending on the mode of use a plate may be subjected to various patterns of loading. While steady loads require static analysis to be performed over them, loads varying in time give rise to the need for a dynamic study. To speculate the nature of response of the plate to external time-varying loads it is rst necessary to determine their natural frequencies through a free vibration analysis.

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

29

T HICK P LATES WITH S HEAR D EFORMATION

The classical plate theory [27] assumes, among other preconditions, that the thickness of the plate should be small compared to its other dimensions. This provides the rationality and basis for neglecting the transverse shear deformation in the theory. It is hence supposed that a normal 1 to the mid-surface of the plate would always remain straight and normal1 to it in the course of bending.

y
w y

y
Actual deformed configuration of normal

X
Y
Assumed shape of deformed normal

Mid-surface of the plate

Z

A normal drawn on the mid-surface after bending

Fig. 1.1: Prole of a normal to the mid-surface of the plate

The effect of transverse shear becomes pronounced as the thickness of the plate increases. Reissner [28] proposed a theory to account for shear deformation in plates where the normal was assumed to remain straight but nor necessarily normal to the midsurface after bending. Later, Mindlin [29] incorporated the effect of rotary inertia, and the resulting theory came to be known as Reissner-Mindlins theory, sometimes simply referred as Mindlins plate theory. In the actual case the normal usually assumes a curved conguration as shown in Fig. 1.1. Mindlins theory approximates it
The perpendicular line segment drawn on the undeformed mid-surface of the plate is typed as normal (in slanted text), as it gets deformed along with the plate.
On the other hand, a normal (typed upright) would essentially mean the direction perpendicular to some line or surface in context, eg. the mid-surface, in this case.
This convention of typesetting a normal has been followed henceforth in the thesis.
1

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

30

with a straight line inclined at an angle x = w x + x with the transverse direction. The discrepancy introduced in approximating the curved prole of the normal with a straight line may be compensated by multiplying the transverse shear rigidities with a shear correction factor.
The need to incorporate shear deformation in a nite element model has turned much more signicant in recent times from a different consideration as well. The consideration was pushed to the forefront by a changing trend in materials used for construction of plates. Conventional constituents like steel or alloys of aluminium are being rapidly replaced by a stiffer, stronger, very light but highly shear-deforming material called ber-reinforced composites, making way for structures of laminated composites.

C OMPOSITE M ATERIALS IN C OMPUTATIONAL M ECHANICS

A laminated structure made from composite materials typically consists of several layers or lamina made from a uni-directional ber reinforced inside a matrix and stacked one over the other with a suitable bonding adhesive. The ber, commonly of graphite or glass, bears the tension in each layer, while the matrix, usually made from araldite or some epoxy, provides the compressive and shearing strength. The layers may be orientated in suitable directions to give the required strength along each axis.

Fig. 1.2: Fiber orientation and layers of a laminated composite plate

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

31

The chief advantage of such materials is its lightness, characterised by a high strength-to-weight ratio. For weight-sensitive structures such as aerofoils or portable machinery, composites are nding more and more application in the industry. But the silver lining is, as everywhere, clouded by the weakness of such structures in shear. This renders the consideration of shear deformation in the formulation of an element more relevant in recent nite element analyses which should contemplate composites as an important constituent for structures and plates. To be able to fully implement the strengths of these materials in engineering design of structures and other industrial products and at the same time prevent their weaknesses from dominating the scene, it is necessary to become conversant with their properties and attributes, and be competent to predict the behaviour of such materials in different conditions of boundary and loading encountered in various static and dynamic problems of reality.

F REE V IBRATION OF P LATES

In applications like reciprocating machine parts or rotating blades and turbines, the dynamic analysis of plates becomes very essential. A dynamic study essentially involves a time varying load which may be harmonic, gradually applied, impact, or random. The steady-state, transient or stochastic analysis required for such conditions primarily necessitates a free vibration study to determine the natural frequencies around which a structure resonates. Dynamic analysis of plates through nite elements calls for the formulation of a mass matrix in addition to the stiffness matrix generated in case of static investigation. While the latter stores the elastic properties of the structure, the former is a representation of the inertia of the plate at its various nodes. It has been noted in previous studies [30] that the distribution of mass in a mass matrix affects the frequencies of a plate much less than does its stiffness. Specially to get the maximum utilization of the sparseness of matrices to reduce computations in

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

32

an eigen solution, a lumped or diagonal form of the mass matrix has often been used. Different techniques for lumping have been proposed by authors from time to time. A Note on Mass Lumping Lumped mass matrices are much more efcient than their consistent counterparts as they require a minimum storage and involve less solution time. The accuracy of results obtained are found to be quite near to those obtained by the consistent formulations. Perhaps the most primitive method for construction of a lumped mass matrix was to distribute the mass of an element at its various nodes on an ad-hoc basis following the geometry of the element. In another [31], trimming the consistent matrix above and below the diagonal has been proposed. This has an advantage that the mass matrix contained non-zero diagonal entries corresponding to the rotational degrees of freedom, of course if the element possessed any. But it had the risk of representing the total mass of the element (and consequently of the structure) incorrectly. Hinton et al. [30] proposed a scheme for lumping the mass at the transverse degrees of freedom of every node by scaling the corresponding diagonal terms of the consistent mass matrix to represent the total mass of the element on an overall basis. All other terms in the lumped mass matrix were assumed to be zero. This scheme produced good results for thin plates. But as the rotary inertia is known to play an important role in the case of thick plates, solution of thick plate problems (not included in their paper) were expected to give unsatisfactory results. Two mass lumping schemes have been proposed in the present thesis as a modication and signicant development of the above scheme. In one the effect of rotary inertia has been considered which populates the diagonals for the rotational degrees of freedom. Results are noted to improve considerably.

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

33

1.3 Perspective, Precept and Prospect of the Proposed Project

The major research work is centred on the development of a new element for analysis of isotropic and composite plates of low to moderate thickness. The element is a displacement type model based on Reissner-Mindlins hypothesis, including the effect of shear deformation into the formulation. Performance of the element has been investigated in a wide range of problems involving static and free vibration analysis of isotropic and composite plates of different shapes and variation of thickness and aspect ratios, with a number of ply-orientations or internal discontinuities, and subjected to different boundary and loading conditions. The proposed element has an arbitrary triangular shape with seven nodes in the initial stage three at the vertices, three at the mid-sides, and a seventh node at the centroid of the element. Each of the six external nodes has ve degrees of freedom : two inplane displacements u and v , a transverse deection w, and two rotations of the normal x and y . The central node is allotted w, x and y as its degrees of freedom, which are later eliminated by static condensation to give the element a simple and elegant form. This results in a thirty degree of freedom element in the nal stage with six nodes, each containing the ve usual degrees of freedom.

Fig. 1.3: Nodes and degrees of freedom of the proposed element in the (a) initial stage (b) nal stage (after condensation)

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

34

The eld variables taken in the formulation of the element are the translations u, v , w, and the rotations of a normal due to shear x and y . While u and v are represented by complete quadratic polynomials, a complete quartic polynomial is used to approximate w, whereas x and y are represented by complete linear polynomials. w So far as the total rotations x (= w x + x ) and y (= y + y ) are used as nodal degrees of freedom of the element, the rotations due w to bending w x and y are directly obtained from w as its partial derivatives.
Choosing x and y as independent eld variables, while still using the conventional degrees of freedom x and y at the nodes, forms the basic underlying concept behind the proposed element. On one hand this key feature solicits the criterion of C 1 continuity to be preserved across interelement boundaries a formal binding that has been skillfully unravelled through elegance and efcacy. Firstly it allows a fourth order deection (and cubic rotations) to be exactly represented with fewer degrees of freedom, thus achieving a very high order of accuracy with greatly reduced computations. Secondly, a correct hierarchy of deection, rotation, moment and shear is brought about in the element, which additionally helps to avert shear locking a crucial drawback of most Mindlin elements. As a backup, the element passes the patch test for moment, shear and twist, and has been noted to be free from spurious modes. And nally, a large number of examples solved with the element proves its efciency and performance in a wide variety of conditions. The element stiffness matrix is formulated in the usual manner using area coordinates and integration is performed following the Gauss quadrature rule [24]. Static condensation of the three internal degrees of freedom gives the nal form of the element stiffness matrix of order thirty by thirty. In case of dynamic analysis consistent mass matrix is formed similarly, but its condensation appears problematic. The reduction technique proposed by Guyan [32] cannot be implemented due to the bulk contribution of the central node. Lumped mass matrices were thus resorted to, which, owing to its diagonal form, can be

C H : 1. I NTRODUCTION

35

easily condensed, and has the added advantage of requiring less memory storage and reduced computation time. Two new lumping schemes have been proposed in the present thesis which excludes the contribution of the central node, and yields a condensed form of the lumped mass matrix of order thirty by thirty. The mass matrix formed in the rst scheme contains diagonal elements corresponding to u, v , w of only the six external nodes. The method is a modication of the lumping scheme proposed by Hinton et al. [30], where contributions of all the nodes along w were taken. The second scheme takes into account the effect of rotary inertia, known [29] to play a signicant role in thick plates and particularly in case of composites. Suitable values are assigned to the diagonals of the mass matrix corresponding to x and y of the external nodes. Results obtained through this scheme show a considerable increase in accuracy over the previous scheme. Details of formulation of the proposed element has been presented in Chapter 3. A large number of numerical examples have been solved using the proposed element in Chapter 4. The examples cover plates of different shapes, ply-orientations, thickness and aspect ratios, boundary and loading conditions, or some internal discontinuities. Static and free vibration analysis have been carried out for both isotropic and composite plates. Deection, moments and shear stresses have been tabulated in case of static analysis, while the rst six natural frequencies have been presented in case of dynamic analysis. Results obtained by the present element has been compared with existing results from standard literature in different journals, thesis or textbooks.

Chapter 2

Review of Past Work

UGE AMOUNT OF research work has been published in the

recent past regarding plate bending elements and their application to static and free vibration analysis of plates [24, 31, 33]. Attempt has been made by different authors to report the progress of such work concerning various topics or for different periods, as review papers in wide range of international journals. Following a few of these [9, 10, 34 40] will throw sufcient light on the volume of such work and the expanse needed to cover them in detail. In the present chapter only those works are being discussed which, either bear a considerable historical signicance, or have been found to be very close to what the author of the present report wishes to study in his investigation.

2.1 Development of Elements

Since the present research primarily concentrates on the development of a new element, major effort has been expended in studying the elements that were developed in the past few years for analysis of plate bending. Among them the most important, and the ones that have, in some form, led to the development of the present element are being reported in this section. McNeal [41] developed a linear triangular element for plate bending. It was named TRIA3 and implemented in the NASTRAN 36

C H : 2. R EVIEW OF PAST W ORK

37

program. A residual bending exibility has been introduced to obtain the exact stiffness corresponding to the theory of structural analysis. It was observed that full integration gave erroneous results for a general one-sided mesh arrangement. Specially fabricated cross-diagonal meshes could correct the problem, though not with much practical signicance. Moreover it showed prominent signs of shear locking for thin plates. A one point reduced integration removed the problem, but introduced additional spurious modes. Though it was argued that a mesh of two or more elements did not affect the results in spite of the presence of these modes, the local inefciencies in predicting shear remained to a great extent. A highly popular triangular element for plate bending was proposed by Stricklin et al. [42]. It is generally referred as the Discrete Kirchoff Triangle (DKT). Though it was suitable only for application to analysis of thin plates, it showed the path to a promising concept for attaining high degrees of accuracy by using much less degrees of freedom. Proceeding along similar lines Lyons [43] developed a system of nite elements with special reference to the analysis of cellular structures. Among them is a four noded quadrilateral element with twelve degrees of freedom for the analysis of bending of at plates. The series of elements are generally referred as ISOFLEX elements. Criseld [44] proposed a modication of the ISOFLEX element. Shear constraints were used in the formulation of the modied element. An explicit algebraic form was provided to the Kirchoff constraints, which made the formulation easy and simple by eliminating cumbersome calculations in the element level. A somewhat related approach have been employed by Tessler and Huges [45] in the development of a three noded triangular element based on the Mindlin plate theory. The rotations of a normal to the middle plane of the plate was approximated by a linear polynomial, while quadratic polynomials were used for the transverse displacements. The formulation initially assumed, in addition to the corner nodes, three midside nodes containing only the transverse displacement as their degrees of freedom. They have been later

C H : 2. R EVIEW OF PAST W ORK

38

removed through static condensation to arrive at a simpler conguration of a three noded triangle by constraining the tangential components of the transverse shear strain to be constant along the element edges. However good behaviour of the element requires a c-factor or residual bending exibility type of modication, both of which have been found to be neither systematic nor well-dened for arbitrary shapes of the element. Bathe and Brezzi [46] proposed a family of plate bending elements based on the m ixed i nterpolation of t ensorial c omponents, which became highly popular with the name of MITC elements. The construction of the elements followed the Reissner-Mindlin theory. Four and nine noded quadrilateral elements were developed which used different interpolations for the bending and shear effects to prevent shear locking. The use of tensorial components for the shear strains rendered the element relatively free from distortion sensitivity. The element was also proved to satisfy the patch test. The transverse deection and bending strains could be predicted quite well by the elements, but the prediction of shear strains was found to be not as much satisfactory, specially in case of very thin plates. Another difculty was revealed in choosing the orders of interpolations of transverse displacements, rotations of the normal and transverse shear strains, which together were responsible for the prevention of locking and optimal convergence of the element. Using the same concept Brezzi et al. [47] constructed other elements falling under the MITC family. Among them are two triangular elements with seven and twelve nodes. The rst (geometrically similar the one developed in the present thesis) used six nodes, excluding the one at the centroid of the triangle, for interpolating of the transverse displacements, while the rotations were interpolated at all the seven nodes. A seven point Gauss integration scheme was used. The twelve noded triangle used respectively ten and twelve nodes for interpolation of displacements and rotations, with a thirteen point Gauss integration. Huges et al. [48] developed the quadrilateral element U1 with bilinear deection and rotation elds based on Mindlin plate theory requiring a single quadrature point for integration. But the

C H : 2. R EVIEW OF PAST W ORK

39

element turned out to be rank decient which resulted in singular or near-singular stiffness matrices in the assembled stage. The manifestation of this singularity were the presence of several spatial oscillations or hourglass patterns which required stabilisation. Later Huges and Tezduyar [49] motivated by a work of McNeal [41] corrected the rank deciency by using a 2 2 quadrature for integration The interpolation of transverse shear was also redened to avoid locking, but the price was paid in terms of increased number of quadrature points requiring larger calculations in forming the element stiffness matrices. The element developed by them have been widely used by researchers and have been referred in the literature as the T1 element. Belytschko and Tsay [50] proposed a stabilisation procedure for controlling the zero energy modes of the U1 element. In their stabilisation procedure additional generalised strains were dened, which were activated by the zero energy modes, but not by the rigid body motion regardless of the shape of the quadrilateral. By suitably scaling the stabilisation parameters it was ensured that the performance of the element was not adversely affected. The element exhibited good efciency on an overall basis and was adopted in several commercial packages like DYNA3D and PAMCRASH. But two shortcomings were still inherent in it. Firstly, the element performed poorly when warped and in particular does not solve the twisted beam problem correctly, and secondly it fails the quadratic type patch test in the thin plate limit. Additionally the choice of parameters were purely arbitrary, differed from one problem to another and the results were seen to be quite sensitive to the choice of their values. Liu et al. [51] in a somewhat generalisation and simplication of the elements developed by Belytschko et al. [50, 52] showed that the stabilisation vectors could be obtained by taking partial derivatives with respect to the natural coordinates. Their objective was to control the hourglass modes in the underintegrated elements, to increase the computational efciency without adversely affecting the accuracy of the results, and at the same time to assure that the element did not experience any locking when the material becomes

C H : 2. R EVIEW OF PAST W ORK

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incompressible. In comparison to the elements of Belytschko et al. this element did not require an articial choice of stabilisation parameters and does not involve any numerical integration. In one of the earliest works on nite element Bazeley et al. [53] discussed the aspects of non-conforming elements. A triangular element for plate bending was developed in which the concept of area coordinates was introduced to dene the shape functions. The problem of satisfying geometric isotropy was thus addressed. Achieving conformity across element boundaries was still an open problem, specially with respect to triangular plate bending elements. The triangular element developed was hence nonconforming and does not satisfy the patch test. Nevertheless the element has been widely used, and the approach is generally referred as the classical method of incompatible modes in plate bending. An attempt was in the same paper to attain inter-element conformity in case of triangular elements by using the usual set of three geometric degrees of freedom. The approach involved superimposing non-polynomial shape functions. The functions dening displacements were conforming throughout the element and across their boundaries, except at the nodal points where they revealed singularities. Irons and Razzaque [54] proposed a signicant improvement to the approach taken by Bazeley et al. [53]. The method involved the use of substitute shape functions and the smoothed derivative technique. The substitute shape functions replaced certain terms in the original denition of the functions. The degree of the highest polynomial was however kept unchanged, but the derivatives of the eld variables appearing in the variational equation were somewhat altered in a least square sense to get continuity of stresses across element boundaries. The elements that were developed following this method were generally non-conforming, but as the mesh size was decreased compatibility between element boundaries was approached in the limit. Wilson et al. [55] worked on the standard bilinear quadrilateral element for plane elasticity analysis to modify it with an

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41

objective to achieve improved behaviour of the element in general bending-dominated patterns. Specially in the beam bending problem the original bilinear element was observed to be over-sensitive to shear, to which it responded wrongly instead of the bending mode expected to be activated in conformation with reality and proven theory. The bending part of the deformation was strengthened by emulating the modes representing pure bending to one order higher than the shear. These enhanced mode rendered the element incompatible from the perspective of criteria to be fullled, but softened the element, and correspondingly the structure, thus bringing it closer to actual behaviour on the performance side of the gambit. No extra nodes or degrees of freedom were allotted, and the additional quantities appearing in the stiffness matrix were eliminated by static condensation. Numerical examples with rectangular or parallelogram shapes of the element showed quite improved results in bending application. Specially worth mentioning are the accuracies obtained for coarse meshes and for nearly incompressible material. However for non-uniform or distorted quadrilateral shapes of the element patch could not be satised and erratic behaviour of results were noted. Taylor et al. [20] advanced a further modication of the incompatible modes element venturing to remove the defects of the previous formulation. The enhanced bending modes were assumed in a manner so that the displacements at the nodes comply with a linear polynomial, and the higher order terms vanish at the nodal points. This assured completeness of the bilinear displacement eld throughout the element. Static condensation was resorted to, involving no increase of degrees of freedom of the element. The performance of the element for distorted mesh congurations was observed to be ne, and patch test was simultaneously satised for arbitrary element shapes. The element was a general successful element and in referred in subsequent literature as the QM6 element. In a more recent work Hueck et al. [18] suggested a stabilisation technique for the rectangular four noded bilinear element in incompatible modes for analysis of plane elasticity problems. The resulting gradient operators were separated into constant and linear

C H : 2. R EVIEW OF PAST W ORK

42

parts corresponding to underintegration and stabilisation of the element stiffness matrix. The usual variational principle of minimum potential energy was utilised to generate the exact analytical expression for the hourglass stabilisation of the rectangular element. In a later paper Hueck and Wriggers [19] further developed their idea, where the expressions of the gradient operators were obtained by expanding the basis function into a second order Taylor series in the physical coordinates. The internal degrees of freedom corresponding to the incompatible modes were eliminated in the element level. The element developed in these two works [18, 19] has has been designated as the QS6 element. Chen and Tang [56] proposed a formulation of the isoparametric element using the quasi-conforming method. Similar to the incompatible modes approach, additional internal displacements were dened as a means to soften the resulting element with respect to shear. The difference lies in that, instead of the shape functions, the partial derivatives of the displacements were expanded in terms of natural coordinates and related to the nodal displacements through the process of weighted residuals. The nodal displacements predicted by the element even in distorted congurations matched excellently with the exact solutions, but the accuracy of the computed stresses was found to be not so satisfactory. Alternative variational principles have been used in many element models. Perhaps the rst such to be investigated was the minimum complementary potential energy, leading to the equilibrium formulation. Pioneering work in this eld was done by de Veubeke [57]. It was established that the standard potential energy formulation provided the lower bound to the energy of the system, while the principle of complementary potential energy dened its upper bound. The prospect of mixed formulations was discussed and a quadratic triangular element with six nodes was developed for plane elasticity analysis. The possibility of zero energy modes was taken into consideration and problem-specic methods to handle such situations were alluded to. A plate bending element was also developed by the author in another paper [58] appearing in more or less the same time. The stiffness matrix for the element

C H : 2. R EVIEW OF PAST W ORK

43

was formed by inverting the exibility matrix formed directly from the variational requirements. Here too the presence of spurious modes, leading to positive semi-denite stiffness matrices, could not be dealt satisfactorily. The works of Morley [59, 60] may be attributed the credit for providing necessary clarications and to some extent a simplication in the use of the equilibrium method. A triangular element was devised for plate bending problems with linearly varying bending moments. In place of shape functions used in the displacement model, suitable stress functions were chosen within an element boundary whose second derivative produced the stresses. Thus C 1 continuity was still required for these functions. The principle of duality was proposed to act as a guideline for choosing the stress functions. But problems still existed regarding the choice of the functions, dening the applied load at the nodes and specifying the boundary conditions. Additionally the displacements were found to be non-unique as they were obtained by integrating the strains. The rst assumed stress hybrid method as is known today was developed by Pian [61, 62]. A four noded quadrilateral element was developed for the analysis of plane stress problems. The element had eight degrees of freedom with ve assumed stress parameters. The stress polynomials were chosen for the interior of the element, and the displacement dened along its edges. The displacements plated the role of Lagrangian multipliers which enforced equilibrium conditions through the interelement boundaries. Another alternative to the displacement method was proposed by Herrmann [63] for the analysis of plate bending problems. It has been classied as a mixed method and has its basis lying on a modied Reissners variational principle. As a generalisation to the hybrid elements, this method allowed the assumption of different combinations of displacements and stresses to be assumed in the interior of the element as well as in its boundary. The continuity requirements for displacements were relaxed, but the stress eld was required to be continuous across the element boundaries, thus bringing the criteria for both sets of trial function to the C 0 level. The use of lower order polynomials reduced the computations

C H : 2. R EVIEW OF PAST W ORK

44

involved in formulation of the stiffness matrix, but at the same time brought in approximations in regard to satisfaction of equilibrium and compatibility conditions. Pian and Sumihara [64] resorted to still another alternative variational principle for the derivation of assumed stress hybrid elements. It was called the Hellinger-Reissner principle and gained wide popularity in the formulation of hybrid stress elements by later researchers. The reason was simple : the evaluation of element stiffness matrices requires less complexity than the ones developed following the principle of minimum complementary potential energy. The essential terms of the assumed stresses, initially chosen as decoupled, were expanded as complete polynomials in the natural coordinates. The internal displacements were also expanded to impose equilibrium conditions, by acting as Lagrangian multipliers. Improvement in results were obtained in the case of a four noded quadrilateral plane stress element. Stresses were better predicted and the element reduced the error in a distorted mesh congurations to some extent. Spurious modes were also not detected in the element. Pian and Tong [22] advanced an important relation between the incompatible displacement model and the hybrid stress model. It was recognised that the incompatible modes approach using the displacement method was equivalent to the assumed stress hybrid formulation developed according the Hellinger-Reissner principle. The proposition had a long sustained effect in later papers. Simo and Rifai [21] presented a class of mixed assumed strain methods with an enhanced strain eld in addition to displacements and stresses. The formulation was based on the Hu-Washizu principle. The conditions that were proposed eliminated the stress eld from the nite element equations and guaranteed satisfaction of the patch test. A four noded quadrilateral plate bending element for the analysis of thick plates was developed, among two other for plane elasticity and axisymmetric problems. Interestingly, the examples that were solved fell in the range of thin plates. Locking, however, was seen to be absent. The plate bending element showed satisfactory performance with essentially the same order

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of accuracy as the T1 element. The paper, as an additional proof, established some sort of equivalence between the incompatible displacement method and the hybrid stress method. It was shown that the classical method of incompatible modes are a special case of the three-eld enhanced assumed strain formulation. Motivated by the above two conjectures, Bischoff et al. [23] and Yeo and Lee [65] established the equivalence of the enhanced assumed strain method based on the Hu-Washizu principle and the hybrid stress method formulated using the Hellinger-Reissner principle. It was proved that both the methods yielded the same results if the material law is strongly satised in the Hu-Washizu principle, or alternatively, if the trial spaces for the assumed strains and assumed stresses obey the orthogonality and the invertibility conditions. While Yeo and Lee approached the proof form the strains side, Bischoff et al. started with the assumed stresses.

2.2 Static Analysis of Plates

The static analysis of isotropic and composite plates using the nite element method or other numerical or analytical methods is well documented by Zienkiewicz and Taylor in the three volumes of their text book [33]. Review papers [9, 10, eg.] also provide an insight to the studies carried out by different authors from time to time. In this section a few research works are being discussed with a view of nominally representing the different methods and approaches that have been undertaken in solution of plate bending problems. Tham et al. [66] have used the spline nite strip method to analyse skew plates with different boundary conditions. They have mapped the original parallelogram shaped plate in Cartesian coordinates to a unit square plate in natural coordinates by a simple transformation and discretised the mapped square plate into strip elements. The interpolation function for the out-of-plane displacement in the square region is expressed as a product of B -3 splines in the strip directions and the conventional Germite cubic polyno-

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mial is considered in the other direction. They have presented the results for skew plates for various skew angles under different loading and boundary conditions. They have also analysed stepped and continuous plates using this method. They have further analysed the circular, elliptical, fan-shaped and circular sector plate along with the parallelogram plate. Reddy [67] in his excellent paper has presented classical and shear deformation theories up to third order and analysed different types of linear and non-linear problems such as bending, natural vibration and stability of composite laminates by nite element method. He solved the problems considering various boundary conditions and lamination schemes. In this paper he has also discussed the effect of shear locking and symmetry conditions of the plate. It is shown that the use of quarter plate models can introduce signicant errors into the solution of certain laminates. Butalia et al. [68] have presented a critical analysis of parallelogram shaped plates under bending using Mindlin nine-noded Heterosis element. To simplify the specication of boundary conditions, they have transformed the element stiffness matrix from the global axes to the local axes system. They have presented the results for rhombic plates for different skew angles and various boundary conditions and have compared the results with a large number of published results. Peng-Cheng and Hong-Bo [69] have proposed multi-variable spline element analysis for plate bending problems. They have used bi-cubic B -spline element equations with multiple variables which have been derived based on the Hellinger-Reissner principle. They have presented results of square plates with simply supported and clamped edge conditions subjected to uniformly distributed and concentrated loads. Sengupta [70] has developed a shear deformable locking-free triangular element to study the bending behaviour of thick and thin plates of various boundary conditions subjected to uniformly distributed as well as concentrated loads. The performance of the element has been found to be excellent.

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47

Barboni and Gaudenzi [71] have developed a general higher order deformation theory to study the bending behaviour of an arbitrary laminated bre reinforced composite plate. They have investigated the three dimensional effects such as warping of sections and presence inter laminar stress eld components assuming a power series expansion of displacements along the thickness. A 0 class of C nite element models based on this theory is then developed for uni- and bi-dimensional elements. They have then applied this model for the analysis of bending and vibration of laminated plates and compared their results with those obtained using threedimensional elasticity theory, classical laminate theory and other higher order theories. Au and Cheung [72] have developed isoparametric spline nite strip methods for the analysis of plane structures. They have used cubic B -spline curves in both modelling of the geometry and representation of the displacement eld. In this method the plate is rst discretised into strips bounded by spline curves and then Mindlin plate formulation is used to solve it. The investigators have used this method for bending, plane stress and plane strain analyses. They have presented results for a curved bridge model under its dead load, an S -shaped slab bridge under uniformly distributed load and concentrated load, and a thick hollow cylinder under internal pressure. This methods yields a relatively narrow band matrix and requires less computational effort. Liu and Lin [73] have proposed a four noded, sixteen degree of freedom, conforming quadrilateral plate bending element in which the element geometry is represented by bi-linear polynomials, while the displacement functions are in terms of modied bi-cubic polynomials satisfying energy orthogonality. In this formulation the usual approach of expressing transverse displacements and rotations by separate expansions is not allowed. They have presented results for square, rhombic and circular plates. It is reported that though improved results have been obtained for the deections and moments at the mid-point of square plates, the clamped edge moments are not so well. Ng and Chen [74] have analysed fan-shaped bridge decks

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by using the spline nite strip method and the Mindlin plate theory. They have used the reduced integration technique to eliminate shear locking and utilised the penalty function method to impose boundary conditions at the end of strips and at intermediate supports. Kabir [75] has developed a shear locking-free robust isoparametric three noded triangular nite element for the bending analysis of advanced bre reinforced plates, arbitrarily laminated and having low to moderate thickness. He has considered the straindisplacement relations based on Reissner-Mindlin plate theory that account for transverse shear deformations in plate formulation. A shear correction term has been introduced into the nite element formulation. He has presented numerical results for a simply supported square and skew plates with cross-ply laminates subjected to uniformly distributed transverse loads. Ali [76] has described the application of nite element technique to the analysis of laminated composite structures in his paper. He developed a methodology for the use of nite element method for the analysis of laminated structures and tested on classical problems with known solutions. He has taken the opportunity to investigate the effect of pertinent nite element parameters on the analysis of composite structures. He developed an optimum nite element model for the analysis of automotive components. The predicted stress results from this model have been veried experimentally. Auad et al. [77] have developed two hybrid-mixed nite elements, MiSP 3 and MiSP 4 a three noded triangular element and a four noded quadrilateral element. They require C 0 continuity for kinematic variables and C 1 or L2 continuity for bending moments and shear forces following the Mixed Shear Projected (MiSP) approach based on the Hellinger-Reissner variational principle. In order to control the shear locking they have chosen an independent shear strain approximation and edge projection for straindisplacement relations. The approximations of the shear forces have been derived from those of the bending moments using the corresponding equilibrium relations. They have derived the bending

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moments using the corresponding equilibrium relations. They have derived the modied MiSP models (MMiSP) by dening the shear strains as projected shear strains in place of dening it from a linear approximation of the nodal degrees of freedom. They have analysed skew and circular plates in addition to the rectangular plates. Park and Kim [78] have performed a numerical study using non-linear nite element analysis to investigate the behaviour of reinforced concrete at plates subjected to combined in-plane compressive loads and out-of-plane oor loads. The at plates used for analysis have been designed by direct design method. Through studies on the effects of different load combinations and loading sequence, the load condition that governs the strength of the at plates has been determined. For at plates under the governing load condition, they have investigated the variations of the buckling coefcient and the effective exural rigidity. As a result this investigation provides rational design rules for the moment magnier method that is applicable to at plates. Liu [79] has developed the two dimensional quadrature element method (DQEM) to study the bending analysis of symmetric cross-ply laminates using the rst order shear deformation plate theory. In this study, the laminated plate which contain different discontinuities in loading, geometry, material and boundary conditions, has rst been divided into several simple plate elements and the differential quadrature method has been used on each simple element. He has examined various problems carefully for convergency and accuracy to establish the reliability of the DQEM. Finally some numerical test examples have been presented to demonstrate the applicability and exibility of this method for practical use.

2.3 Free Vibration Analysis of Plates

Research on free vibration of plates using the classical plate theory have been reported by Leissa in a series of review papers [34 40]. More recent reviews by Yamada and Irie [80] and Liew et al. [81] attempt to cover the research on free vibration analysis of

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isotropic plates using the nite element method or other numerical or analytical methods. The present section discusses a few research works that might serve as representatives of the the various aspects covered in the huge volume of study made on the subject. Shiau and Chang [82] have presented a higher order plate element including the effect of shear deformation for analysis of free vibration of isotropic and angle ply composite rectangular plates. They expressed the total displacement of the element as the sum of the displacement due to bending and that due to shear deformation. The double-sized stiffness and mass matrices developed due to the separation of the two displacements are then reduced to its size as if only the total deection was considered. The effect of thickness ratios, bre orientation angles and boundary conditions have been investigated and compared with the solutions available in relevant literature. Low et al. [83] have studied the free vibration of isotropic rectangular plates carrying a concentrated mass at different positions of the plate. They developed an energy method involving double trigonometric functions and obtained approximate closed form solutions. A nite element analysis has been presented for comparison. An extensive experimental investigation has also been done. Mirza and Alizadeh [84] have idealised a cracked plate as a partially supported one with varying support length and analysed the triangular plates for free vibration using eight node isoparametric quadrilateral element based on Mindlin plate theory. They have studied the effects of the detached base length on variation of these types of structures. They have attempted to eliminate the transverse shear effects in thin plates by employing a reduced Gaussian integration. However it is well known that these types of integration schemes lead to numerical complexities and spurious mechanisms. Though the isoparametric element is capable of addressing some non-conventional plate geometries, the authors have presented only the triangular plate results. Ghazi et al. [85] have used the Lagranges equations of motion coupled with the nite element technique and analysed free

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vibration of plates of pentagonal and heptagonal shapes. First they have proposed an eighteen degree of freedom triangular plate bending element without considering the transverse shear effect and have presented results for isotropic as well as orthotropic plates for various edge conditions. In the second part, considering the transverse shear effect, they have formulated a higher order thirty six degree of freedom nite element and results for some simple combinations of clamped, simply supported and free edge conditions for isotropic, orthotropic and laminated plates have been presented. Houmat [86] has presented a method known as trigonometric hierarchical nite element method for free exural vibration analysis of plates which is formulated in terms of trigonometric hierarchical shape functions. In this method a structure is modelled as just one nite element and the number of hierarchical terms is varied to obtain the results to the desired degree of accuracy. Results are presented for the square and rectangular plates with different boundary conditions. This method, because of its simplicity, can only be applied to simple and uniform structures. Radhakrishnan et al. [87] have developed an approximate method to estimate the fundamental frequency of a plate through the nite element solution of its static deections under a uniformly distributed load using a frequency-static deection relation without the associated eigenvalue problem. Since a four noded quadrilateral isoparametric plate element has been chosen for the static deection of the plate, they have been able to present results for rectangular and circular plates having holes at the centre. This method is useful to assess the approximate natural frequencies of plates of arbitrary shape. A domain decomposition procedure has been presented by Liew and Sum [88] to investigate the vibratory characteristics of plates having orthogonal straight edges with fully clamped boundary conditions. They have used three rectangular segments to construct an L-shaped plate element by reinforcing continuities along the adjacent segments in displacement, slope and higher derivatives. A governing eigenvalue equation has been derived by minimising the energy functional following the Ritz procedure. They

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have employed a set of beam characteristic orthogonal polynomials as the admissible displacement function for each plate segments. By virtue of symmetry in geometry, the basic L-shaped plate element has been employed to construct plates of I and X shapes. and vibration solutions of these plates are obtained via the domain decomposition procedure. Rossi [89] has studied the fundamental frequency of transverse vibration of rectangular plates with internal rectangular and circular holes. All the possible combinations of simply supported and clamped boundary conditions for outer and inner boundaries have been investigated. The analysis has been performed using approximate analytical solution and the results have been compared with the nite element solution. Sivakumar and Iyengar [90] analysed the free vibration of laminated composite plates with cut-outs undergoing large deections. The Ritz nite element model using a nine noded C 0 continuous, isoparametric quadrilateral element with higher order displacement theory, which accounts for parabolic variation of transverse shear stresses, has been used in his analysis. The analysis has been performed for various cut-out geometries such as square, rectangular, circular and elliptical. He presented the results of cutout plates having different aspect ratios of the plate and cut-outs, thickness ratio of the plate and ply orientations, and compared his results with published results. Krishna Reddy and Palaninathan [91] have studied free vibration of simply supported and clamped anti-symmetric angle ply skew laminates by deriving the consistent mass matrix in explicit form. In this investigation they have used a high precision triangular plate bending element. In this analysis the boundary conditions on the skew edges have been imposed through the transformed element matrices. The effect of skew angle, bre orientation angle, number of layers and stacking sequences in the fundamental frequency have been studied. They have observed that the skew angle has considerable inuence on the variation of the frequencies with bre orientation angle and the number of layers in the laminate.

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Iyengar [92] has described the design of composite plates with and without cut-outs undergoing small and large oscillations. In this analysis he has used a nine noded C 0 continuous, isoparametric element with higher order displacement theory to predict the dynamic behaviour of plates. Aspect ratio of the cut-out, bre orientation angle, material property and thickness ratio have been used as design parameters with a constraint on natural frequency.

Chapter 3

Mathematical Formulation

N THIS CHAPTER the equations needed to analyse a plate with

the propounded element are being presented in a concise form.

A section zero starts with the basic assumptions of the ReissnerMindlin plate theory, on which the element is founded. The sections numbered one to three respectively enunciate the development of the element stiffness matrix, element load vector and the element mass matrix. The element once developed will serve to model a plate of arbitrary shape with any combination of boundary conditions and applied distribution of load if any. The element matrices may be assembled to form the corresponding structural matrices through procedures outlined in the fourth section, while section ve denes the boundary conditions to be imposed on the structural stiffness matrix. The last two sections of this chapter describe the solution techniques, and the evaluation of deection, stresses and stress resultants in case of static analysis and frequencies and mode shapes for free vibration problems. The formulation has been worked out for laminated composite plates, where the effect of shear deformation has been taken into account following Reissner-Mindlins hypothesis. The formulation is applicable for the analysis of thick as well as thin plates without any alteration. Isotropic plates may be treated as a special case of composites, where the elastic constants may be suitably assigned.

54

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55

3.0 Basic Assumptions

The middle plane of the plate is taken as the reference plane which is considered to be the xy plane before bending. If a line segment normal to the mid-surface of the plate before bending, as illustrated in Fig. 3.1 (a), still remains straight and normal to the curved mid-surface after bending, as shown in Fig. 3.1 (b), the resulting plate model is dened by the Classical Plate Theory (CPT ). This idealisation works well for thin plates, but the solution obtained by this method starts departing from the actual results as the plate becomes thicker. This happens because the effect of shear deformation, which becomes signicant in a thick plate, is not considered in the CPT.
y= w
y

Y
Z

Deformed configuration of normal

A normal normal to the mid-surface

A normal normal to the mid-surface is assumed to remain straight and normal to it in Classical Plate Theory

Y
Z

Mid-surface of the pla te

w y

w y

A normal normal to the mid-surface is assumed to remain straight, but not normal to it in Reissner-Mindlin Theory

Y
Z

Y
Z

Norm a the m l drawn o id-su n rface

Defor med mid-surface

Fig. 3.1: Prole of a normal to the mid-surface of the plate

(a) before bending (b) approximation of CPT (c) after bending (actual) (d) approximation of RMT

Actually, the normal remains neither normal to the reference plane nor straight after bending. This is due to the fact that in addition to bending strain, some amount of shear strain always take place across the thickness of the plate, which is manifested in the form of additional rotation of the normal. Moreover the shear strain varies across the plate thickness, which make the normal curved in the deformed conguration. The actual shape of the normal in the

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general case is depicted in Fig. 3.1 (c). In order to avoid the complications that lie with the nonlinear shape of the normal, Mindlin [29] recommended taking the normal to be straight, though not necessarily normal to the deected mid-surface. This theory, usually referred as Reissner-Mindlin theory (RMT ) has been adopted in the present study. The phenomenon may be represented by Fig. 3.1 (d), where the shear strain (x or y ) is constant along the plate thickness. Thus the nonlinearity in the normal, i.e. warping at the cross-section in not considered. In order to compensate this effect, a factor is usually multiplied with the transverse shear rigidity. This factor is known as shear correction factor, whose value ranges between 1.0 for no warping, and 1.5 for maximum warping. Most authors have used the factor 1.2, which best compensates for the difference in the strain energies due to actual shear (represented by a parabolic prole of the deected normal ) and the constant shear (assumed in RMT, featuring a straight normal ). In addition to the above, some other assumptions have also been adopted in the the present investigation : The material of the plate follows Hookes Law. The transverse displacement of the plate is small compared to its thickness. The transverse normal stress is negligible compared to the inplane normal stress.

3.1 The Element Stiffness Matrix

In nite element analysis, the element stiffness matrix is one of the most important quantities which denes the characteristics of an element. It essentially relates the nodal displacements to the nodal forces.

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57

3.1.1 Degrees of freedom at the nodes

The element presented in this thesis is triangular in shape having six evenly distributed nodes. Three of the nodes are placed at the three corners of the triangle and three at the midpoints of the sides. In addition to these an extra node at the centroid of the triangle is initially taken, but the degrees of freedom of this node are condensed out later to have its nal form with six nodes.

Fig. 3.2: Nodes of the proposed element (a) before and (b) after condensation

Each of the six external nodes contain ve degrees of freedom the in-plane translations u, v (in the x and y directions), the transverse displacement w (in the z direction), and rotations of the normal to the middle plane of the plate, x and y (on the xz and yz planes respectively). For the centroidal node the three degrees of freedom are w, x and y . Thus the total degrees of freedom of the element is thirtythree in the initial stage, while it is thirty in the nal form of the element after condensation.

3.1.2 Area coordinates

Area coordinates have been used in the present formulation. In fact, the area coordinates being the natural coordinates of a triangle, any quantity in a triangular domain may be conveniently

C H : 3. M ATHEMATICAL F ORMULATION

represented by them. Fig. 3.3 provides an illustration of a triangular element, where any point P within the element divides the 123 into subareas A1 , A2 , A3 .

Fig. 3.3: Area coordinates of a triangular element

The area coordinates of P are dened as the ratios of the areas : Li =

where

3 (x3, y3)
A2 A1
P (x, y)

58

1 (x1, y1)

A3

2 (x2, y2)

Ai ,

(i = 1, 2, 3) 123.

(3.1)

(= A1 + A2 + A3 ) is the area of the element

The relationship between the area coordinates and the cartesian coordinates are as follows :
3

1=
i=1 3

Li Li xi
i=1 3

x= y=
i=1

(3.2)

Li yi (xi , yi ) are the coordinates of the vertex i of the element, (x, y ) the coordinates of the point P (see Fig. 3.3). between these two axes systems may be ex b1 c1 1 b2 c2 x y b3 c3

where and

The reverse relation pressed as : a1 L1 1 L2 = a2 2 L3 a3

(3.3)

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59

where and

ai = xj yk xk yj , bi = yj yk , ci = xk xj , i, j, k following the cyclic order of 1 2 3.

The area of the triangular element can be expressed as =

1 2

a1 + a2 + a3

(3.4)

The partial derivatives of the area coordinates with respect to x and y , being quite useful, may be expressed as follows : Li bi = , and x 2 (3.5) Li ci = , (i = 1, 2, 3). y 2

3.1.3 Field variables

The present formulation is based on ve eld variables or displacement components taken at the reference plane. Amongst these eld variables, the in-plane displacements u and v are represented by complete second order polynomials, the transverse displacement w is approximated by a complete fourth order polynomial, while the shear rotations x and y are represented by linear polynomials. They may be expressed in area coordinates as : 1 2 = P2 u (3.6) u = L1 2 L2 2 L3 2 L1 L2 L2 L3 L3 L1 . . .
6

v = L1 2 L2 2 L3 2 L1 L2 L2 L3 L3 L1

7 8 = P2
12

(3.7)

w = L14 L24 L34 L13 L2 L12 L22 L1 L23

13 L2 3 L3 L2 2 L32 L2 L33 L33 L1 L3 2 L12 14 3 2 2 2 = P4 L3 L1 L1 L2 L3 L1 L2 L3 L1 L2 L3 27

(3.8)

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28 29 = P1 30 31 32 = P1 33

60

x = L1 L2 L3

(3.9)

y = L1 L2 L3

(3.10)

It is to be noted that the shear rotations x and y are taken as the eld variables instead of the total rotations x and y of the normal, which are normally taken in most formulations. This may be considered as the unique feature of the present formulation. This key concept has helped to model a fourth order displacement eld w using comparatively fewer degrees of freedom. With the usual assumption of independent rotation elds x and y , a typical formulation [93, eg.] requires 47 unknowns and consequently 47 degrees of freedom to maintain the proper hierarchy of deection, rotation, moment and shear. Thus by taking recourse to an independent assumption of linear shear rotations x and y , not only are the nodal degrees of freedom reduced by about 30%, but the proper hierarchy of various quantities are also maintained, resulting in an elegant, efcient element that succeeds in achieving a much higher order of accuracy with relatively less computational effort. Though u, v , w, x and y are taken as eld variables, the nodal variables, interestingly, are u, v , w, x and y , where the total rotations of a normal x and y are : x =
y =

P4 w + x = x x
P4 w + y = y y

w + P1
w + P1

x
y

(3.11)
(3.12)

Thus the nodal variables may be expressed as :

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u v w = x y
or where u = 1 2 3 33

61

P2 O2 O2 O2
O2
P

O2 P2 O2 O2
O2
x y

O4 O4 P4
P4
P4

O1 O1 O1
P1
O1

O1 O1 O1
O1
P1

(3.13)

O1 , O2 , O4 are null matrices of order (1 3), (1 6), and (1 15) respectively.

The derivatives with respect to x or y of any term f f (L1 , L2 , L3 ) of P4 may be carried out with the help of Eq. (3.5) as follows : f f L1 f L2 f L3 = + + x L1 x L2 x L3 x
f f L1 f L2 f L3 = + + y L1 y L2 y L3 y
(3.14)

3.1.4 Relationship between coefcients of displacement and nodal displacements

As mentioned earlier and depicted in Fig. 3.2, the six external nodes contain all the ve degrees of freedom u, v , w, x and y , while the central node contain only the three degrees of freedom w, x and y . The thirty-three nodal displacements may be written in the form of a nodal displacement vector = u1 v1 w1 x 1 y 1 u2 v2 w2 x 2 y 2 u3 v3 w3 x 3 y 3 u4 v4 w4 x 4 y 4 u5 v5 w5 x 5 y 5 u6 v6 w6 x 6 y 6 w7 x 7 y 7
T

(3.15)

To establish the relation between the 33 nodal displacements in and the 33 coefcients of displacement 1 , 2 , . . . , 33 in , the area coordinates L1 , L2 , L3 and their derivatives (Eq. (3.5)) of the six external nodes may be substituted in the expressions of

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62

P1 , P2 , P4 of Eq. (3.13), whereas the same substitution made for the last three components w, x and y of Eq. (3.13) in case of the centroidal node. This leads to the relation : where = A (3.16)

A is a matrix dependent on the coordinates of the seven

(3333)

nodes. Thus, once the coordinates of the element are known, A can easily be inverted by virtue of its non-singularity, and the unknown coefcients 1 , 2 , . . . , 33 may be expressed in terms of the nodal displacements as : = A
1

(3.17)

3.1.5 Stress strain relationship

The generalised strain vector may be dened in terms of the eld variables as follows : =

u x

v y

u v + y x
2

2 w x + x2 x
T

2 w y + y 2 y

2w x y + + xy y x

x y

(3.18)

whereas the stress resultant vector may be expressed to consist of the following eight components: = Nx Ny Nxy Mx My Mxy Qx Qy
T

(3.19)

where Nx , Ny are the in-plane forces per unit length along the x and y directions, Nxy is the in-plane shear force per unit length, Mx , My the bending moments per unit length on the xz and yz planes, Mxy the twisting moment per unit length, and Qx , Qy are the transverse shear forces per unit length on the xz and yz planes respectively.

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63

The relationship between the stress and sttrain vectors may be expressed as = D (3.20)

where D is the rigidity matrix dependant on the material properties of the plate. The derivation of the rigidity matrix for a composite laminate is presented in the next subsection.

3.1.6 Rigidity matrix

A laminated composite plate with several layers is shown below in Fig. 3.4.

Fig. 3.4: Fiber orientation and layers of a laminated composite plate

Each layer exhibits orthotropic material property and its stress strain relation in the material axis system (1-2-3) is given by :

                ! % ( $ ) & 0 1 ! 2 " $ # 3 ' !

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64

E1 (1 12 21 ) 11 21 E2 22 12 = (1 12 21 ) 0 13 0 23 0
or = Q

12 E1 (1 12 21 )
E2 (1 12 21 )
0 0 0

0
0

0
0

G12 0 0 kG13 0 0

0 11 22 0 12 0 13 0 23 kG23
(3.21)

where E1 , E2 are the Youngs moduli, and 12 , 21 the Poissons ratios along the material axis system 1-2 (see Fig. 3.4), G12 is the in-plane shear rigidity, G13 , G23 are the transverse shear rigidities, and k is the shear correction factor. Eq. (3.21) may be transformed arrive at the following relation : Q11 Q12 Q16 0 x Q21 Q22 Q26 0 y = Q61 Q62 Q66 0 xy 0 0 Q55 xz 0 0 0 0 Q45 yz or where Q = = Q T
T

into the global axes system, to 0 x 0 y 0 xy xz Q54 yz Q44 (3.22)

Q T

and the transformation matrix T is given by : cos2 sin2 sin cos 0 0 sin2 cos2 sin cos 0 0 2 2 T = 2 sin cos 2 sin cos sin cos 0 0 0 0 0 cos sin 0 0 0 sin cos being the ber orientation of the ply (Fig. 3.4).

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65

With this, the rigidity matrix of a laminate consisting of n layers may be obtained by combining the contribution of the individual layers through the moment equilibrium method as follows : A11 A21 A61 B 11 D = B21 B 61 0 0
n

A12 A16 A22 A26 A62 A66 B12 B22 B62 0 0 B16 B26 B66 0 0

B11 B21 B61

B12 B22 B62

B16 B26 B66

D11 D12 D16 D21 D22 D26 D61 D62 D66 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 A55 A54 A45 A44

0 0 0

0 0 0

(3.23)

where Aij =
k=1 n

k Qij zk1 zk ,

Bij =
k=1 n

k Qij

zk21 zk2 , 2
zk31 zk3 , 3

and

Dij =
k=1

k Qij

the subscripts i, j in each of the elements Aij , Bij and Dij having the values relevant in Eq. (3.23).

3.1.7 Strain Matrix

The eld variables as dened in Eqs. (3.6) (3.10) may be substituted in the generalised strain vector as given in Eq. (3.18) to express it in terms of the area coordinates L1 , L2 , L3 , and the unknown coefcients 1 , 2 , . . . , 33 as follows: = C (3.24)

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66

where y C =
x

P2 O2
P2
O2
O2
O2
O2 O2
y
x

O2
P2
P2 O2
O2
O2
O2 O2

O4
O4
O4
2 x2
2

O1
O1
O1
x P1

P4

y 2 P4
2 xy P4
2

O1
y P1

O4 O4

P1 O1

O1 O1 O1 y P1 x P1 O1 P1

O1

Combining Eqs. (3.24) and (3.17) the strain vector may be related to the nodal displacements vector as : = B (3.25)

where the strain matrix takes the form : B = C A

1

(3.26)

3.1.8 Energy principle

Once the strain matrix B and the rigidity matrix D has been computed, the element stiffness matrix may be obtained using the energy principle. The energy of an element may given by the following integral carried out over the area of the element : U=
1 2

dA

(3.27)

where h is the thickness of the plate. Substituting the stressstrain relationship from from Eq. (3.20) in the above equation, it leads to : U=
1 2

dA

(3.28)

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67

Now Eq. (3.25) may be substituted to arrive at the form : U=

1 2

B dA

which may be represented as U=

1 2

(3.29)

where K is the element stiffness matrix given by : K = B

T

B dA

(3.30)

Eq. (3.26) may be substituted in the above Eq. (3.30) to get a more convenient form K = A
T

C dA

(3.31)

The integration in the above Eq. (3.31) is carried out over the triangular domain of an element using the Gauss quadrature formula [94] to get the element stiffness matrix in its initial form.

3.2 Element Load Vector

The element load vector is derived following the consistent formulation. For a transverse load of intensity q q (x, y ), the consistent load vector may be expressed as : R where = Pl = Pl
T

q dx dy O2 P4 O1 O1 ,

(3.32)

O2

the sub-matrices O1 , (3.8) and (3.13).

O2 , and P4 being dened earlier in Eqs.

The Gauss Quadrature formula [94] is used to evaluate the integral in the above Eq. (3.32).

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68

3.2.1 Condensation of stiffness matrix and load vector

To eliminate the degrees of freedom associated with the internal node of an element, the stiffness matrix K obtained in Eq.
(3333)

(3.31) and consistent load vector

R , obtained in Eq. (3.32) may be

(331)

condensed following the procedure of static condensation. The equilibrium equation for an element K = R

may be partitioned in the following manner, leaving the degrees of freedom of the internal node (that are to be eliminated) in the second partition . T . R K . K 1 1 11 . 21 .... . . . . . . = . . 2 R2 K21 . . K22 where K11 , K21 , K22 are submatrices of K ,
(3030) (330) (33)

(3.33)

1 ,
(301)

2 R2

are partitions of are partitions of

, R .

(31)

and

R1 ,
(301)

(31)

The above Eq. (3.33) may be deconstituted into the following two equations : K11 K21 1 1 + K21 + K22
T

2 2

= =

R1 R2

Eliminating the degrees of freedom 2 from the above equations, the equilibrium equation for an element may be expressed in its condensed form K 1 = R (3.34)

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69

where the condensed element stiffness matrix K and the condensed element load vector R take the expressions : K R = K11 K21 = R1 K21
T T

K22 K22

1 1

K21 R2

(3.35) (3.36)

3.3 Element Mass Matrix

The mass matrix of an element is rst derived in consistent form. The advantages of a consistent mass matrix is that it contains contributions of the transverse as well as rotational degrees of freedom. Following usual procedure [24], the mass matrix of an element may be expressed with the help of Eqs. (3.13) and (3.17) as follows : M = A +
T

h
P

P
T 4

T 1

P
4

+ P
T 5

T 2

P
5

+ P

T 3

dA

h3 12

P
5

+ P

dA

(3.37)

where P 1 , P 2 , . . . , obtained in Eq. (3.13).

are the ve rows of the matrix P

But the consistent mass matrix derived above is of order (33 33), whereas the nal form of the element stiffness matrix obtained in Eq. (3.35) is of order (30 30). So the mass matrix has to be brought to the same order as the stiffness matrix, either by condensation or otherwise. Different methods have been used in nite element literature for condensation of element mass matrices. But unfortunately the procedures are not generally applicable to the present element. For instance, the technique proposed by Guyan [32] requires that the inertia forces of the degrees of freedom to be condensed should be much less than the elastic forces transmitted by the degrees of freedom to be retained, specially in case of the lowest frequency modes. But an inspection of the consistent mass matrix derived in Eq. (3.37) reveals such heavy mass concentration in the central node that any possibility of applying such condensation has to be dismissed.

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70

In this situation, the technique of mass lumping has been used to bring the mass matrix to the same order as the condensed stiffness matrix, i.e. of order thirty by thirty. It has an added advantage of getting all off-diagonal terms zero. This greatly reduces the solution time and memory requirements, but hardly affects the accuracy of the frequencies obtained.

3.3.1 Mass lumping

A lumped mass matrix is essentially a diagonal matrix. In a lumped mass matrix, the mass of an element or structure is assumed to be placed in the form of concentrated lumps at different nodes, which is represented by the diagonals mkk of the lumped mass matrix M associated with translational degrees of freedom of that node. Diagonals associated with rotational degrees of freedom are usually set to zero, as the mass has no distribution over the plate but is concentrated at discrete nodal points. Moreover, there appears no coupling or interconnection between the mass contributions at different translational degrees of freedom. Different mass lumping techniques may be found in standard literature, of which a relevant few have been discussed at the end of Sec. 1.2 on page 32. In the present investigation two new schemes have been proposed for the formulation of lumped mass matrix. In both these schemes, the lumped mass matrix for an element is derived from the corresponding consistent mass matrix. The rst procedure considers masses to be present only at the inplane and transverse degrees of freedom, while the second takes into account the mass contributions at the rotational degrees of freedom also.

Lumping Scheme A : In the rst case, the mass of an element is distributed among the diagonals representing the translational degrees of freedom u, v, w of the six external nodes. The distribution is done in proportion to the corresponding diagonals of the consistent mass matrix. In this scheme, a diagonal of the lumped mass matrix may be obtained as :

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71

mkk

mkk me mii iU mkk m me ii iV = mkk me mii iW 0

if k U,
if k V,
(3.38) if k W, otherwise ;

where mkk is the k th diagonal of the lumped mass matrix M , mkk the k th diagonal of the consistent mass matrix M , me is the mass of the element, and U , V , W are sets containing row (or column) numbers of the mass matrix M corresponding to the degrees of freedom u, v , w of the six external nodes, i.e. U = {1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26}, V = {2, 7, 12, 17, 22, 27}, W = {3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 28}. The technique is somewhat similar to the lumping scheme proposed by Hinton et al. [30], who had proposed distribution of the mass of an element to all the nodes. As a second point of difference, the present lumping scheme considers mass contributions for the in-plane displacements u and v, as well as for the transverse deection w. Though the mass of the plate is quite well distributed in this scheme, the diagonals associated with the rotational terms x and y (i.e. the rotary inertia terms) are all zero. But in case of plates with high thickness-to-length ratio, the rotary inertia of an element becomes signicant. Thus, for the analysis of thick plates, the above procedure does not appear adequate. The nature and dimension of such deviation is illustrated in the numerical examples of Chapter 4 on Results and Discussion.

Lumping Scheme B : To eliminate the shortcomings of the above lumping technique, another scheme has been proposed, which

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72

incorporates the effect of rotary inertia into the lumped mass matrix. The contribution of mass at the translational degrees of freedom is kept identical to the previous scheme, while the contributions at the rotational degrees of freedom are taken to be 12
h2

times the transverse mass obtained at that node. m kk me mii

m kk me mii if k U,
if k V,
if k W,

iU

iV

mkk =

m kk me mii i W h2 m 12 (k1) (k1) 2 h m 12 (k2) (k2)

(3.39)

if k X,

if k Y ;

where X , Y are sets containing the row (or column) numbers in M corresponding to x , y of the rst six nodes, i.e. X = {4, 9, 14, 19, 24, 29}, Y = {5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30}. The idea has been conceived from a comparison of the rst three terms responsible for the transverse mass, with the last two terms representing rotary inertia in the expression of the mass matrix in Eq. (3.37). Though the rst three rows of P , viz. P 1 , P 2 , P 3 , are somewhat different from P 4 or P 5 , the above assumption takes into account the correct order of h, and may thus be expected to produce a sufciently good approximation for the inertia terms. The improvement in results accomplished by taking into account the inertia terms has been studied in Chapter 4.

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73

3.4 Assembly into the Structural Matrices

For a structure discretised into p elements, element stiffness matrices K1 , K2 , . . . , Kp may be obtained by substituting the appropriate nodal coordinates in the matrices A and C formed in Eqs. (3.16) and (3.24) in the construction of the element stiffness matrix K in Eq. (3.35). Each element stiffness matrix may be expanded to get the structural equivalent matrix for that element by a simple transformation, the summation of which for all the elements of the structure yields the stiffness matrix Ks for the structure :
(nn)

Ks =
i =1

Gi

Ki

Gi

(3.40)

where = 1 if k is the global numbering of a local degree of freedom l of the i th element, Gi lk = 0 otherwise ( 1 l 30, 1 k n; l, k I )

(3.41)

is the (l, k )th element of the global transformation matrix Gi ,

(30n)

n being the total number of degrees of freedom of the structure. The mass matrix Ms and load vector Rs for the structure
(nn) (n1)

may be formed almost in a similar manner with the help of Gi s :

p

Ms =
i =1 p

Gi

Mi

Gi

(3.42)

Rs =
i =1

Gi

Ri

(3.43)

where

Mi , Ri are the element mass matrix and element load vector obtained in Eqs. (3.39) and (3.36) for the i th element.

However, in the computer code, the structural matrices are stored in a much efcient manner. Also, the extremely sparse transformation matrices Gi (i = 1, 2, . . . , p) are not actually generated.

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74

Instead, a destination array of order (p 30) is constructed which stores the values of k in their respective (i , l )th positions for which Gi lk = 1 in Eq. (3.41). The stiffness matrix of the structure is stored in a single onedimensional skyline array. To begin with, the lower half-band is stored column-wise, starting from the rst diagonal. The position of the n diagonals of Ks are kept in a separate one-dimensional array for indexing and quick retrieval. To further reduce the storage space and solution time, the trailing zeros in each column are eliminated and the diagonal indices shifted accordingly. The structural mass matrix being diagonal, its storage is much simpler and requires very little space. The diagonal indexing array in this case takes a trivial form, containing the rst n natural numbers in consecutive positions. The structural load vector itself being a one-dimensional array, is stored without any alteration whatsoever.

3.5 Incorporating Boundary Conditions

The boundary conditions used in the present investigation are : ut = 0 w=0 n = 0 un = 0 w=0 t = 0 un = ut = 0 w=0 n = t = 0

Simply supported (A)

(3.44)

Simply supported (B)

(3.45)

Clamped

(3.46)

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75

un = 0 n = 0

Symmetric

(3.47)

where t and n are mutually orthogonal directions on the x-y plane t angential and n ormal to the edge on which the node is located. Also, in agreement with previous denitions, t and n are rotations of the normal on the t-z and n-z planes.
Two different boundary conditions have been used to represent a simply supported edge. In the examples of isotropic plates only the rst condition (A) has been used. For composite plates, the recommendations of Reddy [67] have been followed. Accordingly, condition (A) of Eq. (3.44) has been used for cross-ply laminates, while condition (B) of Eq. (3.45) in case of angle-ply laminates. The boundary conditions are incorporated in the computer code by the penalty function approach where the diagonal element corresponding to a restrained degree of freedom is multiplied by a large number of the order of 1015 . The free boundary condition requires no modication of the stiffness matrix as it does not restrict any sort of displacement of the node.

3.6 Governing Equations

The stiffness matrix, load vector and mass matrix having been assembled for the whole structure and the boundary conditions imposed, the governing equations for static analysis and free vibration analysis of a plate may be enumerated as follows : Static analysis : Ks s = Rs (3.48)

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76

Free vibration analysis : Ks where and s s = 2 Ms s (3.49)

is the nodal displacement vector of the structure,

is a natural frequency of the structure, Ks , Ms , Rs are obtained by incorporating the required boundary conditions in the respective matrices obtained in Eqs. (3.40), (3.42) and (3.43).

3.7 Solution and Results

The above Eq. (3.48) pertains to the standard system of linear simultaneous equations in matrix form, which may be solved to get the nodal displacement vector s , while Eq. (3.49) takes the form of an eigen value problem which yields the natural frequencies and corresponding mode shapes s .

3.7.1 Static analysis problems

The stiffness matrix for the structure obtained in Eq. (3.48) is factorized by the Cholesky decomposition into the form : Ks = where L L L
T

(3.50)

is a lower triangular matrix.

This makes the solution easier, involving two simple steps, viz. a forward substitution of the form : L X = Rs

which yields the vector X as its solution, and a backward substitution in the successive step : L
T

s = X

to get the desired nodal displacements s .

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77

Evaluation of deection and stress/stress resultants at desired points The nodal displacement vector s ments u, v , w, x and y of all the nodes however excludes the displacements of the element, as they had been condensed prior contains the displacein the structure. This centroidal node of each to assembly.

For an arbitrary i th element (i = 1, 2, . . . , p), the displacement vector 1 containing the 30 displacements of the six external nodes may be extracted from the nodal displacement vector s of the structure with the help of the destination array discussed in Sec. 3.4. This is essentially equivalent to the mathematical expression : 1 = Gi s (3.51)

The displacements w, x and y of the central node of any element may be determined from Eq. (3.33) as follows : 2 = K22
1

R2 K21

(3.52)

where the submatrices K22 , K21 and R2 of the element may be stored beforehand, or recalculated as the storage space or run time requirements permit. Now, the displacements u, v , w, x and y at an arbitrary point (L1 , L2 , L3 ) inside the element may be determined from Eqs. (3.13) and (3.17) as : u = P A
1

(3.53)

and the stress vector containing the stresses and stress resultants Nx , Ny , Nxy , Mx , My , Mxy , Qx and Qy , similarly, from Eqs. (3.20), (3.25) and (3.26) as : = D C A
1

(3.54)

Values of deection, moments and stresses at chosen points have been presented in tables in different examples (in Secs. 4.1 and 4.2) of the chapter that follows.

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78

3.7.2 Free Vibration Problems

Solution of the eigen value problem in Eq. (3.49) is carried out by the simultaneous iterative technique devised by Corr and Jennings [95]. It has the advantage that only the lowest frequencies may be found by this method along with the corresponding mode shapes. The algorithm rst decomposes the characteristic matriT ces into the L - L form, and computes the eigen values and normalised eigen vectors through a series of iterations. Required accuracy and maximum number of iterations permissible may be specied by two separate parameters, along with the desired number of frequencies. Frequencies and mode shapes The frequencies ( ) are readily obtained as eigen values from the solution of Eq. (3.49) and may be presented in a tabular form for comparison with the results obtained by other investigators. There are difculties in comparing the quantitative accuracy of mode shapes obtained in free vibration of plates, as most authors have preferred the graphical form to present their results. At most a sort of visual resemblance may be drawn between the mode shape curves of the present study and those of other authors, and nothing can be said precisely about the accuracy of these results. In the present investigation, only the lowest frequencies representing the rst six (or eight) dominant modes have been presented in the examples (in Secs. 4.3 and 4.4) of the ensuing chapter.

Chapter 4

Results and Discussion

HE PRESENT CHAPTER considers different numerical examples

aimed to evaluate the efcacy of the newly developed element.

A code has been developed in FORTRAN to translate the formulation outlined in Chapter 3. The stiffness matrix and mass matrix/ load vector for each element of the plate is formed from its geometry and elastic properties. The matrices are then assembled and nally solved for various parametric values characteristic of the problem. A wide range of problems on static and free vibration of isotropic and composite plates have been presented in four different sections. Each problem considers a particular shape (and ply-orientation) of the plate imposed upon by certain boundary or loading conditions. Plates with internal discontinuities such as a concentrated load or hole at the centre, and problems necessitating transformation of the degrees of freedom at the boundary have also been included. Thickness and/ or aspect ratios have been varied in most of the examples. Results for each of these parametric combinations have been presented for a series of mesh divisions to ensure convergence. Comparison of results obtained in the present investigation has been made with those of other authors obtained either through closed form analytical solutions, by the nite element method, or in experimental measurements. The rst two sections deal with static analysis of isotropic and laminated composite plates, while free vibration analysis of 79

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80

plates, isotropic and composite, have been discussed in the next two. But before that an opening section on some customary checks.

4.0 Preliminary Tests

The element is rst passed through some preliminary tests that claim to certify the robustness of the element for application to different problems. The objective of these tests is to somewhat apprehend whether the results produced by the element in a structural problem converges to the actual results as the mesh is rened. Of them the foremost is the patch test. The test consists in applying suitable loads (representing the states of constant stress) to a small patch of elements having at least one node and some boundary inside the patch that is shared by more than one element. If the deection obtained thereby agree with the theoretical values within the limit of truncation error, it may be well assured that a structure modelled with the element would give accurate results. The logic lies in that, an arbitrary stress distribution is nothing but a linear combination of the elementary stresses for which it has been tested. Only, a stepped variation of plate thickness and a few mesh arrangements with sufcient randomness in element orientation may be required to be certain that the element behaves well in all such conditions. The other important test is the inspection of zero energy modes in the element. The number of zero energy modes is found from the the number of zero eigen values of the element stiffness matrix that exceed the maximum permissible rigid body motions of the element. In case of the present element, this should not exceed ve two in-plane displacements, a transverse displacement and two rotations of the normal the only possible displacements that develop no stress within the element and hence consume no energy. Otherwise spurious modes or zero energy modes are said to exist in the element, which may cause ctitious deections or rotations in the form of hourglass modes in the structure, leading to inaccurate solutions and faulty designs.

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81

PATCH T EST
Patch test is performed for separate cases of uniform moment, uniform shear and uniform twist. The problems for the tests have been taken to be the ones solved by Reddy [96]. The details of the tests have been discussed in the following three subsections.

4.0.1 Patch test for uniform moment

A plate as shown in Fig. 4.1(a) is extended up to innity in the positive and negative direction of y . It is clamped at x = 0 and subjected to uniformly distributed edge moment m units per unit length at x = a. Under this condition the plate will undergo cylindrical bending having constant curvature in the xz plane. A representative portion of the plate having a nite dimension in the direction of y is modelled by the proposed element as shown in Fig. 4.1(b). The boundary conditions imposed are: w = 0 and x = 0 at the nodes 1, 2 and 3, and y = 0 at the nodes 1, 3, 6, 8, 11 and 13. The applied edge moment is distributed consistently at the correspond2 ing nodes where 3 ma has been applied at node 12 while the nodes 11 1 and 13 carry moments of magnitude 6 ma each. The values of deection obtained at the edge nodes 11, 12 and 13 are identical to each other. Table 4.1 presents the edge displacements for different thick-

                    " " # !
Fig. 4.1: Patch test for uniform moment and shear

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

82

ness ratios (h/a). It may be observed that the values obtained by the present element are exactly equal to the one obtained through analytical solution, presented in the subsequent row of the table. Table 4.1: Patch Test for uniform moment
Edge displacement
E1 h3 w ma2

(h/a)
Proposed Element
Analytical solution

0.1
5.45999

1.0
5.46000
5.460

10.0
5.45999

100.0
5.45999

4.0.2 Patch test for uniform edge shear

The same plate as depicted in Fig. 4.1 (in the above section) is analysed under the action of a uniformly distributed transverse load p units per unit length at the free edge instead of uniformly distributed moment m per unit length keeping all other conditions unchanged. Similar to the previous case the deection values obtained at the free edge for different thickness ratio h/a are presented with the analytical results in Table 4.2. For the analytical results, Table 4.2: Patch Test for uniform shear
Edge displacement
G12 hw pa

(h/a)
Proposed Element
Analytical solutions
(i) pure bending
(ii) shear only

0.1
141.167
140.000
1.0

1.0
2.40374
1.40000
1.0

10.0
1.01403
0.01400
1.0

100.0
1.00014
0.00014
1.0

the deection values due to bending deformation and shear deformation are presented separately. The shear correction factor taken in this case is 1.0, as the analytical solution is based on that. Table 4.2 shows that the deection values, obtained in the nite element analysis, agree well with the analytical results, combining the contributions of bending and shear deformations. It is also clear

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

83

that the nite element result is converging towards analytical result based on shear deformation with the increase of thickness ratio, where the contribution of bending deformation goes on diminishing.

4.0.3 Patch test for uniform twist

A square plate as shown in Fig. 4.2 (a) is simply supported at A, B and D (w = 0) and subjected to a transverse load P = 50 lb at C. The plate is analysed by the proposed element using different mesh
D C

arrangements as shown in Fig. 4.2 (b)-(e). The values of deection obtained at C for the different mesh arrangements are presented in Table 4.3. In order to eliminate the effect of shear deformation the shear rigidities G13 and G23 have been magnied by a large factor 106 . Comparison has been made with the analytical results based on thin plate solution, which shows that the results agree fully.

" # ! $ & ' & $ &$ ( %            $ ) &$ & 0

B

Fig. 4.2: Patch test for uniform twist

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

84

Table 4.3: Patch Test for uniform twist

Displacement at C in inches

Mesh arrangement
Proposed Element
Analytical solution

(b)
0.249600

(c)
0.249600
0.24960

(d)
0.249600

(e)
0.249600

Z ERO E NERGY M ODES

The stiffness matrices for different shapes of an element are taken and their eigen values are computed. The number of zero eigen values are always found to be ve. This guarantees that the element has no spurious rigid body modes.

4.1 Static Analysis of Isotropic Plates

It is common practice, after evolving from the preliminary tests, to expose the newly developed element to a convergence study. This is done by taking a well known problem, discretising the structure into a series of mesh divisions starting from a coarse one and going upto the nest and modelling the structure with the proposed element. If the results are observed to converge to the actual results as the mesh becomes ner, one is inclined to conclude that a simulated network of elements quite satisfactorily corresponds to the actual structure and prediction of the displacement and stress components should be sufciently accurate in most practical situations. So the numerical examples may be agged off with a simple problem accepted as a standard one by almost all researchers and scientic authors in nite element literature, in which convergence of the results produced by a gradually rening mesh of the proposed element may be introspected in detail and compared to those obtained by other authors. Unless otherwise stated, the value of Poissons ratio ( ) has been taken as 0.3, and shear correction factor (k ) to be equal to 1.2.

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

85

4.1.1 Simply supported square plate subjected to uniformly distributed load

A square plate shown in Fig. 4.3 (taking b/a = 1) is simply supported at all the four edges and subjected to a uniformly distributed load of intensity q . The thickness ratio (h/a) of the plate is taken from 0.0001 (a very thin plate) to 0.25 (a considerably thick plate). The analysis is carried out using the proposed element for a

Fig. 4.3: Mesh arrangement in a rectangular plate

large number of mesh divisions, a typical 6 6 mesh arrangement being shown in Fig. 4.3. The deection at the centre of the plate obtained through the present analysis is presented in Table 4.4 (a). To check the accuracy of the present results the analytical solution of Salerno and Goldberg [97] and Timoshenko and WinowskyKrieger [27] and nite element results of Pryor et al. [98], Rao et al. [99], Bergan and Wang [100], Bhashyam and Gallagher [101], Yuan and Miller [102] and Sengupta [70] are presented in the table. The results obtained by Timoshenko and Woinowsky-Krieger [27] are based on thin plate theory while the other results are based on Reisner Mindlins plate theory. As Salerno and Goldberg [97], Pryor et al. [98] and Rao et al. [99] have performed their analysis taking the shear correction factor k = 1, the present analysis is also carried with the same assumption for the highest mesh size (1616) and the deection thus obtained is presented in the Table 4.4 (a).

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

86

Table 4.4: Simply supported isotropic square plate subjected to u.d.l. q

(a) Deection 100 wD at the centre of the plate qa4

References
Present (2 2)
Present (4 4)
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)

h a

0.0001
0.3811
0.3991
0.4029
0.4043
0.4054
0.4058
0.4058

0.4053
0.406

0.01
0.3814
0.3993
0.4031
0.4046
0.4056
0.4060
0.4060

0.4065

0.407
0.4093
0.4078
0.406
0.406

0.05
0.3875
0.4047
0.4085
0.4098
0.4108
0.4111
0.4102
0.4108
0.4092
0.4105

0.413
0.4278
0.411

0.10
0.4063
0.4212
0.4246
0.4258
0.4266
0.4269
0.4234
0.4242
0.4223
0.4237
0.427
0.436
0.4614
0.427

0.20
0.4795
0.4864
0.4886
0.4894
0.4900
0.4902
0.4761
0.4777
0.4749
0.4763
0.485
0.521
0.5544

0.25
0.5340
0.5352
0.5365
0.5371
0.5375
0.5376
0.5157
0.5179
0.5144
0.5157

0.6139
0.538

Present (12 12)

Present (16 16)
Present (16 16)1
Salerno and Goldberg [97]1
Pryor et al. [98]1
Rao et al. [99]1
Bergan and Wang [100]
Bhashyam and Gallaghar [101]
Yuan and Miller [102]
Sengupta [70]
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

The bending moment at the centre and the shear force at the midedge of the plate obtained in the present analysis are presented in Tables 4.4 (b) and (c). Comparison with the results of other authors have been made as usual. The accuracy of the results obtained by the proposed element is clearly indicated by the tables, which also show that the rate of convergence with mesh division is very good. It is also evident from the tables that the element is free from shear locking even for a thickness ratio h/a = 0.0001.
1

Results obtained with shear correction factor k = 1.

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

87

Table 4.4: ( . . . Continued)

(b) Moments 10Mx at the centre of the plate qa2

References

h a

0.0001
0.5373
0.5016
0.4887
0.4843
0.4813
0.4802

0.4714
0.4789

0.01
0.5376
0.5020
0.4890
0.4847
0.4817
0.4805

0.485
0.4779
0.4789
0.479

0.05
0.5445
0.5075
0.4931
0.4876
0.4830
0.4813
0.479

0.4913
0.4789

0.10
0.5577
0.5124
0.4955
0.4884
0.4833
0.4814
0.481
0.481
0.5072
0.4789

0.20
0.5742
0.5147
0.4965
0.4887
0.4833
0.4814

0.479
0.5341

0.25
0.5777
0.5150
0.4966
0.4888
0.4833
0.4814

0.5450
0.4789

Present (2 2)
Present (4 4)
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Salerno and Goldberg [97]
Bergan and Wang [100]
Yuan and Miller [102]
Sengupta [70]
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

(c) Shear force

10Qx at the mid-edge of the plate qa

References

h a

0.0001
0.2376
0.2908
0.3087
0.3195
0.3311
0.3365

0.3960

0.01
0.2376
0.2908
0.3087
0.3195
0.3311
0.3365
0.378
0.3400
0.338

0.05
0.2406
0.2965
0.3141
0.3228
0.3299
0.3325

0.3377

0.10
0.2461
0.3010
0.3158
0.3226
0.3285
0.3312
0.309
0.3377

0.20
0.2513
0.3008
0.3149
0.3215
0.3277
0.3306
0.278

0.25
0.2513
0.3002
0.3145
0.3212
0.3275
0.3305

0.3377

Present (2 2)
Present (4 4)
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Bergan and Wang [100]
Sengupta [70]
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

88

4.1.2 Clamped square plate subjected to a concentrated load at the plate centre
A square plate as shown in Fig. 4.3 (b/a = 1) clamped at all the four edges and subjected to a concentrated load P at the plate centre is taken in this example. Similar to the earlier example, the analysis is performed for different thickness ratios with a number of mesh divisions in each case. The deection obtained at the plate centre is presented with the thin plate analytical solution of Timoshenko and Woinowsky-Krieger [27] and nite element solution based on Reisner Mindlins plate theory of Batoz et al. [103], Bhashyam and Gallagher [101] and Yuan and Miller [102] in Table 4.5 (a). The bending moment Mx obtained at the middle of the side (x = 0, y = b/2) is presented with that of Timoshenko and Woinowsky-Krieger [27] in Table 4.5 (b). The comparison of the results shows very good performance of the proposed element in a plate having concentrated load and clamped boundary condition, which are the most delicate conditions in a thick plate problem.

4.1.3 Simply supported rectangular plate subjected to uniformly distributed load

A rectangular plate as shown in Fig. 4.3 simply supported at all the four edges and subjected to uniformly distributed load is analysed for different aspect ratios (b/a). A quarter of the plate is modelled and the analysis is performed for three aspect ratios with three different mesh divisions in each case. The thickness ratios taken in all the cases is 0.01 and 0.1. The deection and bending moments at the plate centre obtained in the present analysis are presented with those of Salerno and Goldberg [97] and Timoshenko and Winowsky-Krieger [27] in Table 4.6 (a)(c). As in Sec. 4.1.1, for comparison with the results of Salerno and Goldberg [97], present results are also obtained taking shear correction factor k = 1. The results are noted to agree well.

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

89

Table 4.5: Clamped isotropic square plate with a concentrated load P at the centre
(a) Deection 100 wD at the centre of the plate P a2

References
Present (2 2)
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)

h a

0.0001
0.6556
0.5865
0.5690
0.5650
0.5635
0.5484

0.01
0.6569
0.5882
0.5711
0.5674
0.5660
0.5643

0.560

0.05
0.6895
0.6296
0.6203
0.6206
0.6221
0.6257

0.10
0.7893
0.7594
0.7686
0.7827
0.7940
0.8223
0.743
0.770

0.15
0.9529
0.9592
1.0122
1.0492
1.0768
1.147

0.20
1.1799
1.2419
1.3498
1.4192
1.4697
1.595

Present (12 12)

Present (16 16)
Yuan and Miller [102]
Batoz et al. [103]
Bhashyam and Gallaghar [101]
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

(b) Moments

Mx at the mid-edge of the plate P

References

h a

0.0001
0.1011
0.1221
0.1264
0.1266
0.1265

0.01
0.1013
0.1222
0.1266
0.1268
0.1267
0.1257

0.05
0.1036
0.1239
0.1275
0.1271
0.1265

0.10
0.1083
0.1228
0.1241
0.1227
0.1216

0.15
0.1124
0.1190
0.1190
0.1172
0.1160

0.20
0.1153
0.1151
0.1144
0.1124
0.1112

Present (2 2)
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

90

Table 4.6: Simply supported isotropic rectangular plate subjected to u.d.l. q

(a) Deection
b a h a

100 wD at the centre of the plate q a4

References

1.2
0.01
0.5559
0.5610
0.5629
0.5642
0.5647
0.5647

0.564

1.5
0.1
0.01
0.7624
0.7678
0.7699
0.7715
0.7720
0.7720
0.772
0.772

2.0
0.1
0.01
1.0079
1.0100
1.0113
1.0123
1.0127
1.0127
1.013
1.103

0.1
1.0435
1.0445
1.0451
1.0456
1.0456
1.0402
1.040

Present (4 4)
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (16 16)1
Salerno and Goldberg [97]1
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

0.5827
0.5871
0.5885
0.5895
0.5898
0.5856

0.7937
0.7983
0.7999
0.8009
0.8012
0.7964
0.797

(b) Moments
b a h a

10 Mx at the centre of the plate q a2

References

1.2
0.01
0.6593
0.6413
0.6352
0.6307
0.6292
0.6291

0.627

1.5
0.1
0.01
0.8659
0.8363
0.8258
0.8181
0.8154
0.8153
0.812
0.812

2.0
0.1
0.01
1.1135
1.0598
1.0411
1.0277
1.0230
1.0230

1.017

0.1
1.1189
1.0644
1.0451
1.0305
1.0250
1.0249

Present (4 4)
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (16 16)1
Salerno and Goldberg [97]1
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

0.6706
0.6487
0.6401
0.6332
0.6306
0.6306

0.8754
0.8433
0.8309
0.8210
0.8172
0.8172
0.813

Results for shear correction factor k = 1

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

91

Table 4.6: ( . . . Continued)

(c) Moments
b a h a

10 My at the centre of the plate q a2

References

1.2
0.01
0.5294
0.5135
0.5081
0.5043
0.5029
0.5028

0.501

1.5
0.1
0.01
0.5434
0.5191
0.5103
0.5039
0.5016
0.5016
0.499
0.498

2.0
0.1
0.01
0.5475
0.5208
0.4859
0.4736
0.4693
0.4693
0.464
0.464

0.1
0.5546
0.5082
0.4899
0.4759
0.4706
0.4706
0.467

Present (4 4)
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (16 16)1
Salerno and Goldberg [97]1
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

0.5414
0.5207
0.5125
0.5063
0.5040
0.5040

0.5544
0.5260
0.5147
0.5060
0.5028
0.5028
0.502

4.1.4 Square plate simply supported at the three edges and free at the forth edge subjected to uniformly distributed load
A square plate as shown in Fig. 4.3 (b/a = 1) simple supported at the three edges and free at the fourth edge (y = b) is taken in this example with a view to study the performance of the element in a problem having free edge condition. The plate is subjected to uniformly distributed load. The analysis is carried out for four thickness ratios with three different mesh divisions. The deection and bending moment Mx at the centre of free edge (x = a/2, y = b) and bending moments Mx and My at the plate centre (x = a/2, y = b/2) obtained in the present analysis are presented in Table 4.7 (a)(d). For comparison, the thin plate solution of Timoshenko and WoinowskyKrieger [27] is presented in the table which is in excellent agreement with the nite element results for the lowest thickness ratio (h/a = 0.01).
1

Results for shear correction factor k = 1

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

92

Table 4.7: S-S-S-F isotropic square plate (h/a = 0.01) subjected to u.d.l. q
(a) Deection 10 wD at the middle of the free edge q a4
h a

References

0.01
0.1285
0.1286
0.1286
0.1286

0.10
0.1346
0.1348
0.1349

0.15
0.1405
0.1407
0.1407

0.20
0.1481
0.1481
0.1482

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

(b) Moment

Mx at the middle of the free edge q a2

h a

References

0.01
0.1132
0.1127
0.1124
0.112

0.10
0.1074
0.1077
0.1078

0.15
0.1053
0.1057
0.1058

0.20
0.1033
0.1036
0.1037

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

(c) Moment

Mx at the centre of the plate q a2

References

h a

0.01
0.0792
0.0791
0.0792
0.080

0.10
0.0778
0.0783
0.0786

0.15
0.0779
0.0784
0.0787

0.20
0.0780
0.0786
0.0789

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

93

Table 4.7: ( . . . Continued)

(d) Moment My at the centre of the plate q a2

References

h a

0.01
0.0392
0.0387
0.0386
0.039

0.10
0.0370
0.0371
0.0372

0.15
0.0364
0.0365
0.0366

0.20
0.0356
0.0358
0.0359

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Timoshenko & W.-Krieger [27]

4.1.5 Clamped skew plate subjected to uniformly distributed load

A skew plate as shown in Fig. 4.4 is taken in this example to study the performance of the element in a problem having nonrectangular plate geometry. The plate is clamped at all four sides and subjected to a uniformly distributed load of intensity q . The plate is analysed taking a series of skew angles () ranging

Fig. 4.4: Mesh arrangement in a skew (rhombic) plate

A B

from 15 to 75 , and the results are obtained for three different mesh divisions (a typical 6 6 mesh arrangement being shown in Fig. 4.4). The thickness ratio taken in all the cases is 0.01. The deection and principal moments obtained at the centre of the plate a x= a 2 (1 + sin ), y = 2 cos are presented with the analytical so-

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

94

lution of Morley [104] and nite element results of Sengupta [105] and Butalia et al. [68] in Table 4.8 (a) (c). The table shows that the results are in well agreement even for a skew angle = 75 . Table 4.8: Clamped skew plate subjected to u.d.l. q
(a) Deection 100 wD at the centre of the plate q a4

References
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Morley [104]
Sengupta [105]

15
0.18081
0.18035
0.18018
0.17968
0.18114
0.17948

30
0.12377
0.12348
0.12338
0.12304
0.12419
0.12281

45
0.06068
0.06054
0.06049
0.06032
0.06087
0.05997

60
0.01743
0.01740
0.01739

0.01746
0.01704

75
0.00153
0.00151
0.00150

0.00150
0.00143

Butalia et al. [68]

(b) First principal moment

10 M1 at the centre of the plate q a2

References
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Morley [104]
Sengupta [105]

15
0.92821
0.92016
0.91698
0.92520
0.90297
0.92207

30
0.79428
0.79360
0.79307
0.80000
0.78379
0.79906

45
0.56665
0.57325
0.57551
0.57600
0.57178
0.58270

60
0.30298
0.31285
0.31670

0.31754
0.32603

75
0.08683
0.09149
0.09375

0.09591
0.09998

Butalia et al. [68]

(c) Second principal moment

10 M2 at the centre of the plate q a2

References
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Sengupta [105]

15
0.84586
0.82569
0.81854
0.80256
0.81785

30
0.64308
0.62954
0.62464
0.61199
0.62273

45
0.40548
0.39738
0.39444
0.38498
0.38933

60
0.19125
0.18771
0.18419
0.17785
0.17639

75
0.05614
0.04801
0.04574
0.04150
0.03942

Butalia et al. [68]

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

95

4.2 Static Analysis of Composite Plates

Numerical examples of laminated composite plates having different shapes and thickness ratios, boundary conditions and bre orientations or some internal discontinuities have been worked out in this section. In all the examples a single layer of a laminate is assumed to possess the same thickness and material properties with respect to its local axes. Two sets of numerical data have been used in the examples to represent the properties of composite materials. Material I : E1 = 25 E2 , G12 = G13 = 0.5 E2 , G23 = 0.2 E2 , 12 = 0.25.

Material II : E1 = 40 E2 , G12 = G13 = 0.5 E2 , G23 = 0.6 E2 , 12 = 0.25. Material I has been used in the rst two and last two examples (Secs. 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.2.5 and 4.2.6), while Material II in the third and fourth examples consisting of Secs. 4.2.3 and 4.2.4. The boundary conditions recommended by Reddy [67] have been followed all throughout.

4.2.1 Cross-ply square laminated plate subjected to sinusoidally distributed load

The problem of a cross-ply (0/ 90/ 0) square laminated plate as shown in Fig. 4.3 (a/b = 1) is studied for three different values of thickness ratios (h/a). The plate is subjected to a distributed load y of intensity q = q0 sin x a sin b . The plate is modelled with the proposed element using the mesh arrangement as shown in Fig. 4.3. The analysis is done with six different mesh sizes taking simply supported boundary condition at the four edges. The deection obtained at the plate centre is presented in Table 4.9 with analytical solution of Reddy [106]. The table shows the accuracy and rate of convergence of the results obtained by the proposed element. The material properties used in this example are those of Material I .

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

96

Table 4.9: Simply supported cross-ply (0/ 90/ 0) square plate subjected to sinusoidal load of amplitude q0 Deection
h a
0.01
0.10
0.25

1000 E2 w at the plate centre q0 a4

Present element 88 12 12 16 16
4.3630
6.7188
17.777

44
4.4427
6.8021
17.861

66
4.3831
6.7393
17.794

20 20
4.3413
6.6971
17.760

Reddy [106]
4.34
6.69
17.76

4.3487
6.7044
17.766

4.3436
6.6994
17.762

4.2.2 Cross-ply square laminated plate subjected to uniformly distributed load

A cross-ply square laminated plate, simply supported at its four sides and subjected to uniformly distributed load, is analysed by the proposed element. Material I has been used in this example, and the analysis is done with ve different mesh sizes. The study is made for anti-symmetric (0/ 90) and symmetric (0/ 90/ 90/ 0) ply arrangement taking four different values of thickness ratio (h/a). The element is found to be free from shear locking problem in the analysis of the plate having h/a = 0.0001. The deection and bending moment obtained at the plate center are presented in Table 4.10 (a) and (b). Comparison of the results obtained in the present study are made with those of Reddy [106] and Kabir [75]. The results obtained by Reddy are based on an analytical solution, while Kabir has analysed the plate using a three-node triangular element developed by him, and to compare the results has used an analysis package (NISA) where a four-node quadrilateral element has been used. Table 4.10 shows that the results obtained by the proposed element has a good accuracy and rate of convergence with mesh size.

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

97

Table 4.10: Simply supported cross-ply square laminate subjected to u.d.l. q

(a) Deection 100 E2 w at the centre of the plate q a4

Ply-orientation 0/ 90
References
h a

0.1
19.489
19.478
19.474
19.04
18.95
19.46

0.0208
17.083
17.073
17.069
17.05
17.00
16.96
0.0208
6.9908
6.9709
6.9636
6.9605
6.9586
6.92
6.91
6.95

0.001
16.973
16.963
16.960
16.95
16.85
16.94
0.001
6.8333
6.8132
6.8058
6.8029
6.8011
6.79
6.76
6.79

0.0001
16.972
16.963
16.959
16.95
16.85
16.94
0.0001
6.8326
6.8127
6.8055
6.8025
6.8007
6.79
6.76
6.79

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Reddy [106]
Kabir [75]
NISA [75]
References
h a

Ply-orientation 0/ 90/ 90/ 0

0.1
10.285
10.266
10.259
10.256
10.254
9.69
9.66
10.25

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (24 24)
Reddy [106]
Kabir [75]
NISA [75]

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

98

Table 4.10: ( . . . Continued)

(b) Moments 100 Mx at the centre of the plate q a2

Ply-orientation 0/ 90
References
h a

0.1
65.186
63.834
63.338
63.103
62.974
62.71
62.25
62.64

0.0208
66.026
64.341
63.735
63.462
63.311
62.98
62.53
62.93
0.0208
125.58
122.95
121.92
121.41
121.12
120.51
119.57
121.79

0.001
65.735
64.277
63.736
63.480
63.339
63.00
62.61
62.98
0.001
125.11
122.82
122.00
121.62
121.41
120.93
120.11
120.84

0.0001
65.729
64.271
63.730
63.475
63.333
63.00
62.62
62.98
0.0001
125.11
122.82
122.00
121.62
121.41
120.93
120.12
120.12

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (24 24)
Reddy [106]
Kabir [75]
NISA [75]
References
h a

Ply-orientation 0/ 90 /90/ 0
0.1
115.49
113.21
112.40
112.02
111.82
112.68
111.84
111.24

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (24 24)
Reddy [106]
Kabir [75]
NISA [75]

4.2.3 Angle-ply square laminated plate subjected to uniformly distributed load

An angle-ply (/) square laminated plate, simply supported at its four edges and subjected to uniformly distributed load, is analysed with four different mesh sizes taking = 15, 30 and 45 . Similar to the previous example a quarter of the plate is taken in the analysis. In all the case the thickness ratio (h/a) is taken as 0.01 and the material properties of Material II are used. The results obtained with the present element are presented with those of Whitney [107],

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

99

Ren [108] and Turvey [109] in Table 4.11 (a) and (b). Whitney [107] and Ren [108] have used classical laminate theory in their analysis while Turvey [109] has taken the effect of shear deformation according to Mindlins plate theory. The results are given in the form of deection and bending moments at the centre of the plate. The results show that the performance of the propose element is quite good. Table 4.11: Simply supported angle-ply (/ ) square laminate (h/a = 0.01) subjected to u.d.l. q
(a) Deection 100 E2 h3 w at the plate centre q a4

References

15
7.1645
7.1600
7.1579
7.1567
7.142
7.169
7.163

30
7.7663
7.7651
7.7644
7.7641
7.752
7.779
7.767

45
7.3342
7.3340
7.3339
7.3338
7.321
7.348
7.335

Present (12 12)

Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (24 24)
Whitney [107]
Ren [108]
Turvey [109]
(b) Moments 100 h2 q a2

M at the centre of the plate

References

15
11.791
11.655
11.588
11.459
11.422
11.420
11.420

Mx
30
7.1662
7.0866
7.0464
7.0227
6.954
6.954
6.952

My
45
3.7424
3.7205
3.7086
3.7014
3.680
3.679
3.680

15
1.2769
1.2598
1.2517
1.2471
1.233
1.234
1.234

30
2.7576
2.7288
2.7143
2.7059
2.681
2.682
2.681

45
3.7423
3.7205
3.7086
3.7015
3.680
3.679
3.680

Present (12 12)

Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (24 24)
Whitney [107]
Ren [108]
Turvey [109]

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

100

4.2.4 Square laminated plate with different boundary conditions subjected to u.d.l.
A square laminated plate, subjected to uniformly distributed load, is analysed by taking different boundary conditions at its four edges. Three combination of boundary conditions, viz. F-C-S-S ( i.e. F ree at x = 0, Clamped at x = a, Simply supported at y = 0, Simply supported at y = a, see Fig. 4.3 on page 85), F-F-C-C, and F-S-C-S (similarly) are presented in Table 4.12. The study is made for crossply (0/ 90) and angle-ply (45/ 45) arrangements taking thickness ratio (h/a) as 0.1 in all the cases. The elasticity coefcients corresponding to Material II are used in the present problem. The plate is analysed with four different mesh divisions. The deection and bending moments obtained at the centre of the plate are presented with those of Haldar [93] in Table 4.12 (a) (c). The results are observed to agree well.

4.2.5 Skew laminated plated simply supported at its four sides

A skew laminated plate is analysed with the proposed element using the mesh arrangement as shown in Fig. 4.4 on page 93. The plate is simply supported at its four edges and subjected to uniformly distributed load. The properties of Material I are used in this example. The study is made for cross-ply (0/ 90/ 0) and angleply (45/ 45/ 45) arrangements taking skew angle () of 15 , 30 and 45 (see Fig. 4.4). The analysis is done with four different mesh sizes taking thickness ratio (h/a) as 0.1. As the sides BC and AD (Fig. 4.4) are inclined to the global axis system (x-y ), the degrees of freedom of the nodes on these two sides are expressed in a local axis system (1-2) (Fig. 4.4) for the incorporation of boundary conditions. This is done through a coordinate transformation, which is applied at the element level. The deection and bending moments obtained at the plate centre are presented in Table 4.13 (a) (c) with those of Haldar [93]. The table shows that the performance of the proposed element in a skew plate problem is quite good.

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

101

Table 4.12: Angle-ply (45/ 45) and cross-ply (0/ 90) square laminate (h/a = 0.1) with different boundary conditions subjected to u.d.l. q
(a) Deection 100 E2 h3 w at the centre of the plate q a4

References

b.c.
ply

F-C-S-S
2.3749
2.3793
2.3808
2.3815
2.3825

F-F-C-C
1.5399
1.5427
1.5442
1.5450
1.5460

F-S-C-S
1.7794
1.7828
1.7842
1.7849
1.7865

angle- cross- angle- cross- angle- cross2.1482

2.1475
2.1472
2.1470
2.1467

Present (12 12)

Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (24 24)
Haldar [93]

1.0926
1.0915
1.0911
1.0910
1.0906

1.6247
1.6238
1.6234
1.6233
1.6229

(b) Moments

100 h2 q a2

Mx at the centre of the plate

References

b.c.
ply

F-C-S-S
4.0243
3.9896
3.9898
3.9986
4.1080

F-F-C-C
3.1915
2.9581
2.8660
2.8228
2.7290

F-S-C-S
3.5899
3.4897
3.4614
3.5544
3.5102

angle- cross- angle- cross- angle- cross.62616

.73489
.78963
.82251
.96543

Present (12 12)

Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (24 24)
Haldar [93]

.10992
.08416
.07578
.07197
.06523

5.9370
5.7980
5.7980
5.7707
5.6720

(c) Moments

100 h2 q a2

My at the centre of the plate

References

b.c.
ply

F-C-S-S
5.3226
5.3112
5.3241
5.3407
5.4817

F-F-C-C
4.7689
4.5453
4.4574
4.4160
4.3224

F-S-C-S
4.7057
4.6251
4.6030
4.5980
4.6449

angle- cross- angle- cross- angle- cross7.3344

7.2092
7.1529
7.1222
7.0286

Present (12 12)

Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (24 24)
Haldar [93]

4.3130
4.2276
4.1954
4.1799
4.1518

5.9370
5.7980
5.7980
5.7707
5.6720

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

102

Table 4.13: Skew laminate (h/a = 0.1) with angle-ply (45/ 45/ 45) and cross-ply (0/ 90/ 0) simply supported on all sides and subjected to u.d.l. q
(a) Deection 100 E2 h3 w at the centre of the plate q a4

References

ply

15
9.7698
9.7550
9.7500
9.7478
9.7432

30
8.1959
8.1928
8.1925
8.1927
8.1950

45
5.4814
5.4932
5.4996
5.5037
5.5128

angle- cross- angle- cross- angle- cross9.2543

9.2646
9.2689
9.2713
9.2760

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Haldar [93]

8.3681
8.3903
8.4005
8.4062
8.4170

5.4813
5.4931
5.4996
5.5037
5.4899

(b) Moments

100 h2 q a2

Mx at the centre of the plate

References

ply

15
125.22
121.60
120.27
119.64
118.49

30
104.52
102.17
101.30
100.88
100.10

45
69.483
68.505
68.144
67.978
67.730

angle- cross- angle- cross- angle- cross47.454

46.470
46.249
46.188
46.102

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Haldar [93]

49.305
47.955
47.431
47.183
46.730

40.263
39.680
39.457
39.354
39.000

(c) Moments

100 h2 q a2

My at the centre of the plate

References

ply

15
13.847
13.646
13.573
13.539
13.471

30
15.280
15.089
15.015
14.979
14.903

45
15.555
15.393
15.316
15.278
15.200

angle- cross- angle- cross- angle- cross49.333

48.374
48.169
48.119
48.051

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Haldar [93]

53.205
51.862
51.339
51.091
50.642

44.774
44.218
44.003
43.903
43.551

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

103

4.2.6 Triangular laminated plate clamped at its three sides

A triangular laminated plate as shown in Fig. 4.5 is analysed with the proposed element taking the set of properties corresponding to Material I . The plate is clamped at its three edges and subjected to uniformly distributed load. The study is made for cross-ply (0/ 90) and angle-ply (45/ 45) arrangements taking thickness ratio (h/a) as 0.1. The plate is modelled with the mesh arrangement as shown in Fig. 4.5 and the analysis is done with four different mesh sizes (Fig. 4.5). The deection and bending moments obtained at a 3a a 3a 3a A (x = a 4 , y = 4 ), B (x = 8 , y = 4 ) and C (x = 8 , y = 8 ) as shown in Fig. 4.5 are presented with those of Haldar [93] in Tables 4.14 (a)(c). The results show that the proposed element has a good performance in the problem of triangular plate.

Fig. 4.5: A triangular plate with an 8 8 mesh Points A, B, C where results are calculated.

A B C

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

104

Table 4.14: Clamped triangular laminate (h/a = 0.1) with angle-ply (45/ 45/ 45) and cross-ply (0/ 90/ 0) subjected to u.d.l. q
(a) Deection 100 E2 h3 w at three internal points of the plate q a4

Pts
References
ply

angle- cross- angle- cross- angle- cross9.7698

9.7550
9.7500
9.7478
9.7432

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Haldar [93]

9.2543
9.2646
9.2689
9.2713
9.2760

8.1959
8.1928
8.1925
8.1927
8.1950

8.3681
8.3903
8.4005
8.4062
8.4170

5.4814
5.4932
5.4996
5.5037
5.5128

5.4813
5.4931
5.4996
5.5037
5.4899

(b) Moments

100 h2 q a2

Mx at the internal points of the plate

Pts
References
ply

angle- cross- angle- cross- angle- cross125.22

121.60
120.27
119.64
118.49

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Haldar [93]

47.454
46.470
46.249
46.188
46.102

104.52
102.17
101.30
100.88
100.10

49.305
47.955
47.431
47.183
46.730

69.483
68.505
68.144
67.978
67.730

40.263
39.680
39.457
39.354
39.000

(c) Moments

100 h2 q a2

My at the internal points of the plate

Pts
References
ply

angle- cross- angle- cross- angle- cross13.847

13.646
13.573
13.539
13.471

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Haldar [93]

49.333
48.374
48.169
48.119
48.051

15.280
15.089
15.015
14.979
14.903

53.205
51.862
51.339
51.091
50.642

15.555
15.393
15.316
15.278
15.200

44.774
44.218
44.003
43.903
43.551

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

105

4.3 Free Vibration Analysis of Isotropic Plates

Difculties in using consistent mass matrix have been discussed earlier. In the rst example in Sec. 4.3.1 results has been worked out with the consistent mass matrix, as well as lumped mass matrices using both the lumping schemes (A and B) proposed in Sec. 1.2 on page page 32. The analysis in all subsequent examples have been carried out using only the lumping scheme B. All frequencies except in Sec. 4.3.7 (Table 4.21) have been expressed in the non-dimensional form : = a2
where a is the dimension of the plate in the x-direction, h is its thickness, is the mass density of the material. E h3 and D= 12(1 2 )
The value of Poissons ratio ( ) in all the examples has been taken to be 0.3 while the shear correction factor (k ) as 5/6, unless specied in a particular case.

h D

4.3.1 Square plate simply supported on all four sides

A square plate simply supported at all the four edges is analysed for the thickness ratios (h/a) = 0.01, 0.1, and 0.2. The plate is analysed by the proposed element using the type of mesh arrangement as shown in Fig. 4.3 on page page 85. A number of mesh divisions are considered to test the convergence of the element. The rst eight natural frequencies obtained in the present analysis are presented in Table 4.15 (a) (c). To check the accuracy of the present results the analytical solutions of Leissa [110] and Liew et al. [111], and nite element results of Halder [93] are also presented in the above tables. The results of Leissa [110] were obtained by employing the Ritz method with beam functions, while Bhat [112] and Liew et al. [111] used the Raleigh-Ritz procedure with Gram-Schmidt orthogonal plate function. To obtain the frequencies for the symmetric as well as the asymmetric modes a full plate has been analysed using a series of mesh divisions from 44 to

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

106

2020. Accuracy and monotonic convergence of the results obtained by the proposed element is evident. The rate of convergence with mesh division is also good. Table 4.15: Frequencies of a simply supported square plate
(a) Thin plate (h/a = 0.01)
Me sh Si ze

Mode number (n)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Present Element: Consistent Mass Matrix

4
8
12
16
20
4
8
12
16
20
4
8
12
16
20

19.685
19.719
19.726
19.728
19.730
19.687
19.720
19.727
19.730
19.731
19.686
19.719
19.726
19.728
19.730
19.732

48.958
49.181
49.245
49.269
49.281
48.966
49.192
49.255
49.279
49.291
48.956
49.182
49.245
49.269
49.281
49.303

49.056
49.213
49.258
49.276
49.285
49.066
49.223
49.269
49.286
49.295
49.056
49.213
49.259
49.276
49.285
49.303

78.406
78.646
78.745
78.784
78.803
78.396
78.675
78.772
78.810
78.829
78.370
78.649
78.746
78.784
78.803
78.842

97.537
98.058
98.281
98.375
98.422
97.495
98.104
98.324
98.417
98.463
97.455
98.063
98.284
98.376
98.423
98.517

97.538
98.058
98.281
98.375
98.422
97.495
98.104
98.324
98.417
98.463
97.456
98.064
98.284
98.376
98.423
98.517

127.34
127.37
127.67
127.80
127.87
126.93
127.45
127.75
127.88
127.94
126.86
127.39
127.68
127.81
127.87
128.00

127.40
127.58
127.77
127.86
127.90
127.27
127.65
127.85
127.93
127.97
127.21
127.58
127.78
127.86
127.91
128.00

Present Element: Lumping Scheme A

Present Element: Lumping Scheme B

Mindlins Thick Plate Theory [29]

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

107

Table 4.15: ( . . . Continued)

(b) Moderately thick plate (h/a = 0.1)
Me sh Si ze

Mode number (n)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Present Element: Consistent Mass Matrix

4
8
12
16
20
4
8
12
16
20
4
8
12
16
20

19.011
19.047
19.057
19.060
19.062
19.152
19.187
19.197
19.200
19.202
19.011
19.047
19.056
19.060
19.062
19.065
19.080
19.162

45.190
45.370
45.429
45.450
45.462
45.906
46.085
46.142
46.165
46.177
45.181
45.365
45.424
45.448
45.460
45.483
45.435
45.824

45.221
45.375
45.428
45.450
45.462
45.923
46.090
46.144
46.166
46.177
45.195
45.368
45.425
45.448
45.460
45.483

69.523
69.610
69.697
69.736
69.755
70.886
71.123
71.218
71.259
71.280
69.344
69.583
69.685
69.728
69.751
69.794
69.864
68.183

84.453
84.659
84.838
84.918
84.958
86.228
86.780
86.965
87.046
87.088
84.079
84.607
84.813
84.902
84.949
85.038
89.907
85.521

84.455
84.660
84.838
84.918
84.959
86.230
86.780
86.965
87.046
87.087
84.082
84.608
84.812
84.902
84.948
85.038

106.43
106.28
106.47
106.55
106.59
108.80
109.31
109.52
109.61
109.66
105.75
106.20
106.41
106.51
106.57
106.68
112.39
104.19

107.47
106.35
106.47
106.55
106.59
108.92
109.33
109.52
109.61
109.66
105.91
106.20
106.42
106.53
106.58
106.68

Present Element: Lumping Scheme A

Present Element: Lumping Scheme B

Results of other authors

M2
Rc3
Rl
4

Mindlin [29] Rock and Hinton [113], using c onsistent mass matrix 4 Rock and Hinton [113], using l umped mass matrix

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

108

Table 4.15: ( . . . Continued)

(c) Thick plate (h/a = 0.2)
Me sh Si ze

Mode number (n)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Present Element: Consistent Mass Matrix

4
8
12
16
20
4
8
12
16
20
4
8
12
16
20

17.404
17.434
17.442
17.445
17.446
17.782
17.815
17.823
17.826
17.828
17.397
17.432
17.441
17.444
17.446
17.448
17.449
17.453

37.970
38.079
38.116
38.132
38.138
39.229
39.382
39.422
39.438
39.446
37.887
38.061
38.108
38.126
38.135
38.152
38.152
38.255

38.055
38.086
38.117
38.132
38.138
39.266
39.388
39.424
39.439
39.446
37.918
38.062
38.108
38.127
38.136
38.152
38.152
38.255

55.270
55.070
55.101
55.119
55.129
56.948
57.130
57.187
57.211
57.223
54.802
55.003
55.075
55.106
55.121
55.150
55.151
55.274

65.210
64.972
65.045
65.083
65.104
66.925
67.449
67.553
67.596
67.617
64.327
64.853
64.999
65.059
65.089
65.145
65.146
65.957

65.218
64.973
65.045
65.083
65.104
66.926
67.449
67.553
67.597
67.619
64.330
64.854
64.999
65.059
65.090
65.145
65.146

79.169
78.570
78.607
78.638
78.656
80.926
81.472
81.588
81.632
81.653
77.894
78.395
78.529
78.606
78.628
78.697
78.698

80.618
78.674
78.622
78.641
78.659
81.024
81.493
81.586
81.632
81.656
78.027
78.391
78.544
78.595
78.637
78.697
78.698

Present Element: Lumping Scheme A

Present Element: Lumping Scheme B

Results of other authors

M5
L6
K
7

Mindlin [29] Leissa [110] 7 Kanaka Raju and Hinton [114]

6

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

109

4.3.2 Rectangular plate clamped on all four sides

A rectangular plate clamped at all the four edges is taken in this example. The analysis is performed for different aspect ratios with a number of mesh divisions in each case. The rst eight natural frequencies of the plate is presented in Table 4.16 together with the results of Leissa [110], Bhat [112] and Liew et al. [111]. Comparison of the results obtained by the present element with the above references shows the performance of the proposed element in a plate having clamped boundary condition and for a wide range of aspect ratios from 1.0 to 2.5.

4.3.3 Square plate with one or more free edges

Plates with free edges are believed to be benchmark tests of the efciency and performance of an element. So three examples of square plates having free boundary in combination with simply supported or clamped boundary have been considered here to study the performance of the element in problems having free edge condition. A square plate with two opposite edges free and simply supported at the other two edges is considered in the rst of these examples. In the second example, a square plate with three edges clamped and the fourth edge free is taken, while the last of them investigates a square cantilever plate, i.e. with one edge clamped and the other three edges free. The analysis is carried out for different mesh divisions. The rst six frequencies are presented in Table 4.17 with those of Leissa [110], Mizusawa [116] and Liew et al. [111]. Excellent agreement with these results show the performance of the element for the most adverse boundary condition, viz. plates with free edges.

4.3.4 Skew plate simply supported/ clamped on all four sides

A skew plate as shown in Fig. 4.4 on page page 93 is taken in this example to study the performance of the element in a problem having non-rectangular plate geometry. Two cases are analysed

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

110

Table 4.16: Frequencies of a clamped rectangular plate

References
n
1
2
3
4
5
6

b/a = 1.0
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Leissa [110]
Liew et al. [111]
Barik [115]
Haldar [93]
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Leissa [110]
Liew et al. [111]
Haldar [93]
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Leissa [110]
Liew et al. [111]

35.819
35.885
35.933
35.954
35.964
35.992
35.99
35.922
35.97

73.320
73.050
73.198
73.272
73.312
73.413
73.41
73.221
73.32
94.087
93.466
93.612
93.693
93.738
93.86
93.87
93.96
173.17
172.63
173.10
173.36
173.50
173.85
173.84

73.515
73.099
73.223
73.287
73.322
73.413
73.221

109.45
107.80
107.94
108.04
108.09
108.27
108.26
107.63
108.52

138.75
130.81
131.06
131.25
131.35
131.64
131.66
131.26
131.44
181.09
178.60
178.93
179.16
179.28

138.82
131.42
131.69
131.87
131.98
132.24
131.91

b/a = 1.5
60.367
60.545
60.649
60.694
60.717
60.77
60.77
60.75
b/a = 2.5
146.14
147.00
147.38
147.54
147.62
147.80
147.78

147.78
147.80
148.25
148.46
148.57
148.82
148.83
148.70
231.40
219.74
220.26
220.63
220.85
221.54
221.52

158.73
149.02
149.20
149.36
149.45
149.74
149.88
150.14
252.81
289.64
290.10
290.58
290.89
291.89
291.87

196.47
225.87
225.94
226.19
226.37

386.89
381.45
382.18
382.74
383.15

401.41
390.66
392.41
393.16
393.54

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

111

Table 4.17: Frequencies of a square plate with free edges

References
n
1
2
3
S-S-F-F
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Leissa [110]
Liew et al. [111]
Mizusawa et al. [116]
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Leissa [15]
Liew et.al. [16]
Mizusawa et al. [116]
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Leissa [110]
Liew et al. [111]
Mizusawa et al. [116]

9.6088
9.6249
9.6280
9.6291
9.6293
9.631
9.641
9.631

16.109
16.127
16.131
16.132
16.133
16.135
16.142
16.13

36.605
36.692
36.710
36.716
36.720
36.726
37.764
36.73

38.676
38.850
38.899
38.918
38.927
38.945
38.947
38.95

46.477
46.646
46.693
46.712
46.721
46.738
46.739
46.74

70.253
70.615
70.678
70.704
70.716
70.740
70.739

C-C-C-F
23.789
23.870
23.894
23.904
23.908
24.020
23.935
23.71

39.846
39.906
39.950
39.968
39.977
40.039
40.008
39.77

62.892
62.928
63.062
63.122
63.153
63.493
63.243
62.68

76.602
76.437
76.557
76.615
76.646
76.761
76.714
76.54

80.714
80.271
80.395
80.460
80.495
80.713
80.588
80.05

117.49
116.25
116.39
116.48
116.54
116.80
116.67

C-F-F-F
3.4704
3.4701
3.4694
3.4692
3.4683
3.492
3.503
3.47

8.4964
8.5036
8.5046
8.5050
8.5042
8.525
8.521
8.46

21.172
21.250
21.268
21.274
21.277
21.429
21.298
21.19

27.119
27.167
27.183
27.190
27.193
27.331
27.204
27.18

30.848
30.915
30.935
30.943
30.946
31.111
30.972
30.77

53.953
54.097
54.141
54.159
54.167
54.443
54.203

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

112

here : one with all four edges simply supported and the other with all four edges clamped. The analysis of each is performed for three skew angles () = 30 , 45 and 60 (see Fig. 4.4). The thickness ratio (h/a) in all the cases is taken as 0.01. The rst six natural frequencies are presented in Tables 4.18 (a) and (b) together with the results of Liew et al. [111], Mizusawa et al. [116], Durvasula [117], Barik [115] and Halder [93]. Very good agreement with these results show that the element is capable of modeling non-rectangular plates with different boundary conditions.

4.3.5 Triangular plate simply supported/ clamped on all sides

A right angled triangular plate having base a and perpendicular b, as shown in Fig. 4.6 is analysed in this example using both the simply supported and clamped boundary conditions. This is another example to illustrate the performance of the element for non-rectangular geometry, and where transformation of the nodal degrees of freedom is required. The aspect ratio (b/a) of the triangle is varied from 1.0 to 3.0, and the thickness ratio (h/a) is taken as 0.001. The rst six natural frequencies of the plate are presented in Tables 4.19 (a) and (b) and compared with the existing results of Kim and Dickinson [118] and Geannakakes [119]. Good agreement show that the present element is suitable for analysing plates of any non-rectangular shape.

Fig. 4.6: A triangular plate with an 8 8 mesh

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

113

Table 4.18: Frequencies of a skew plate

(a) Simply supported edge condition

References

= 30
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Liew et al. [111]
Barik [115]
Haldar [93]
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Liew et al. [111]
Barik [115]
Haldar [93]
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Barik [115]
Haldar [93]

24.994
24.969
24.954
24.945
25.069
25.022
25.110

52.302
52.468
52.537
52.572
52.901
52.550
52.570
65.452
65.848
66.019
66.106
66.422
66.103
66.189
102.41
103.44
103.98
104.28
104.69
104.74

71.719
71.758
71.771
71.772
72.344
71.940
72.100
99.114
99.638
99.911
100.05
100.87
99.948
100.32
145.74
146.31
146.95
147.33
147.84
148.25

83.260
83.525
83.651
83.714
84.780
83.564
83.720
108.24
108.10
108.00
107.92
107.78
108.84
108.86
193.39
192.65
193.51
194.20
194.14
195.31

121.32
121.97
122.30
122.47
122.03
122.25
138.61
139.31
139.83
140.13
139.40
140.24
213.54
212.62
212.13
211.73
213.67
212.51

121.65
122.10
122.37
122.51
122.56
122.28
164.46
166.00
166.84
167.30
167.68
167.48
250.09
245.21
245.66
246.39
245.78
247.66

= 45
35.593
35.413
35.305
35.232
34.938
35.632
35.700
= 60
67.329
66.547
66.065
65.725
66.345
66.208

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

114

Table 4.18: ( . . . Continued)

(b) Clamped edge condition

References

= 30
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Durvasula [117]
Barik [115]
Haldar [93]
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Durvasula [117]
Barik [115]
Haldar [93]
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Barik [115]
Haldar [93]
Mizusawa et al. [116]

45.798
45.932
45.992
46.024
46.140
45.982
46.001

80.585
81.006
81.227
81.346
81.691
81.337
81.313
104.45
105.16
105.62
105.89
106.59
105.95
106.07
173.53
173.80
174.83
175.56
176.75
176.54
177.75

104.08
104.52
104.75
104.88
105.51
104.85
104.69
145.88
146.38
146.97
147.35
149.03
146.86
147.45
229.12
226.93
227.79
228.65
229.39
228.65
231.74

117.90
118.33
118.64
118.83
119.52
118.48
118.55
154.96
155.73
156.23
156.53
158.90
156.57
156.37
295.20
286.01
286.08
286.99
287.22
287.83
292.54

162.48
163.37
163.91
164.34
165.80
163.45
163.30
194.43
193.91
194.63
195.20
199.37
193.98
195.03
300.29
300.61
301.60
302.34
303.62
301.55
301.81

163.18
163.44
164.04
164.31
164.74
163.63
223.77
224.91
226.30
227.22
231.94
228.14
227.14
370.94
350.00
348.27
348.92
347.79
348.59
357.58

= 45
65.080
65.308
65.427
65.493
65.929
65.420
65.495
= 60
120.66
120.80
121.02
121.17
121.27
121.13
120.90

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

115

Table 4.19: Frequencies of a right triangular plate

(a) Simply supported edge condition

References

n
b/a = 1

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Kim and Dickinson [118]
Geannakakes [119]
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Kim and Dickinson [118]
Geannakakes [119]
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Kim and Dickinson [118]
Geannakakes [119]

49.002
49.220
49.225
49.221
49.35
49.348

97.324
98.215
98.289
98.315
99.76
98.697

127.07
127.71
127.77
127.78
128.40
128.30

165.94
166.49
166.74
166.84
169.10
167.80

196.05
195.89
196.12
196.22
200.30
197.46

246.42
244.89
245.09
245.17
249.80
248.86

b/a = 2
27.682
27.699
27.705
27.709
27.76
27.759

49.642
49.702
49.729
49.741
49.91
49.888

74.208
74.321
74.376
74.398
74.85
74.887

80.809
80.944
81.007
81.040
81.84
81.517

105.34
105.54
105.65
105.71
107.40
108.43

118.75
119.03
119.18
119.26
122.20
121.65

b/a = 3
21.685
21.757
21.784
21.796
21.85
21.846

35.245
35.387
35.453
35.487
35.63
35.651

50.446
50.661
50.771
50.833
51.27
52.155

65.288
65.704
65.886
65.979
66.73
66.672

68.184
68.564
68.737
68.835
71.03
73.979

86.143
86.778
86.992
87.122
92.84
94.155

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

116

Table 4.19: ( . . . Continued)

(b) Clamped edge condition

References

n
b/a = 1

Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Kim and Dickinson [118]
Geannakakes [119]
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Kim and Dickinson [118]
Geannakakes [119]
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Kim and Dickinson [118]
Geannakakes [119]

93.010
93.235
93.339
93.394
93.789
93.789

155.64
156.30
156.59
156.75
157.79
157.78

192.58
193.00
193.25
193.40
194.77
194.76

238.09
239.58
240.21
240.55
242.80
242.81

273.14
274.08
274.64
274.97
277.67
277.71

330.82
331.51
331.96
332.26
335.77
335.84

b/a = 2
52.978
53.133
53.213
53.257
53.447
53.445

81.274
81.699
81.888
81.993
82.431
82.439

111.65
112.29
112.58
112.74
113.51
113.70

120.19
120.65
120.90
121.06
121.92
122.03

148.64
149.62
150.11
150.38
152.09
153.32

164.23
165.51
166.04
166.35
168.68
168.77

b/a = 3
42.369
42.458
42.535
42.583
42.756
45.756

59.979
60.335
60.516
60.622
61.000
61.051

78.818
79.599
79.879
80.045
80.809
81.269

97.924
98.588
98.811
98.974
99.908
100.27

100.65
101.72
102.06
102.27
104.12
107.33

120.41
123.23
123.76
124.06
129.69
132.72

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

117

4.3.6 Simply supported square plate with a central cutout

A square plate simply supported on all the four sides with a centrally located square cutout is analysed in this example. The edges of the cutout are parallel to the edges of the plate as shown in Fig. 4.7. Results obtained by the present element taking thickness ratio h/a = 0.01 are presented in Table 4.20 together with the results of Lee et al. [120] and Halder [93]. Lee et al. [120] has solved the problem numerically based on Rayleigh quotient (result set RQ ) as well as by Finite element method (result set FE ), while Halder [93] used a high precision triangular element to get the results. Results obtained in the present analysis is in quite good agreement with the above results, even for large cutouts upto 60% of the plate length.

Fig. 4.7: A square plate with a central square cutout

x a x a

Table 4.20: Fundamental frequencies of a square plate of dimension a a with a central square cutout x x
References
x/a
0.1

19.447

19.176
19.357
19.20

0.2
19.156
19.130
19.122
18.901
19.120
19.13

0.3

19.446

19.245
19.357
19.42

0.4
20.795
20.755
20.742
20.556
20.732
20.72

0.5

23.456

23.329
23.235
23.31

0.6
28.486
28.379
28.349
28.491
28.241
28.27

Present (10 10)

Present (20 20)
Present (30 30)
Lee et al. [120]
Haldar [93]

RQ
FE

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

118

4.3.7 Rectangular plate carrying a mass at the centre

A problem with real dimensions and elasticity values has been analysed in this example, in which a rectangular plate (710mm 420mm 2mm) with two opposite edges simply supported and the other edges clamped carried a centrally located mass from 0.24 kg to 5.00 kg . Frequencies (in Hz) were determined experimentally and veried using both closed form (energy method) and nite element solutions. The material properties taken are : E = 70 109 N/m2 , = 0.334, and = 2770 kg/m3 . Comparison has been made with the results of Boay [121] and Halder [93], where good agreement has been found with the present results.

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

119

Table 4.21: Fundamental frequencies (in Hz) of an S-S-F-F rectangular plate carrying a concentrated mass at the centre
Mass (in kg)
0.24
0.50
0.74
1.00
1.24
1.48
1.76
1.98
2.22
2.48
2.75
3.00
3.25
3.50
3.75
4.00
4.25
4.50
4.75
5.00

(8 8)
48.892
38.799
33.394
29.483
26.867
24.840
22.968
21.761
20.639
19.600
18.670
17.918
17.250
16.652
16.111
15.620
15.172
14.759
14.379
14.027

Present (12 12)

49.043
38.947
33.534
29.614
26.990
24.956
23.077
21.866
20.739
19.696
18.763
18.007
17.336
16.735
16.192
15.699
15.248
14.834
14.452
14.098

(16 16)
49.102
39.006
33.589
29.665
27.038
25.001
23.121
21.907
20.779
19.733
18.799
18.042
17.370
16.768
16.224
15.730
15.278
14.864
14.481
14.126

Boay [121]
48.75
38.83
33.48
29.54
26.95
24.96
23.09
21.88
20.76
19.72
18.79
18.03
17.36
16.76
16.22
15.73
15.28
14.86
14.48
14.12

Haldar [93]
48.64
38.72
33.33
29.48
26.88
24.87
22.96
21.79
20.67
19.64
18.67
17.93
17.27
16.66
16.13
15.65
15.17
14.79
14.38
14.04

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

120

4.4 Free Vibration Analysis of Composite Plates

Numerical examples of vibration of laminated composite plates having different shapes, boundary conditions, bre orientations or some internal discontinuities have been worked out in this section. Three sets of numerical data have been used in the examples to represent the properties of different composite materials. Material I has been used in the rst four examples, Material II in the example of triangular plates in Sec. 4.4.5, while Material III has been used in Sec. 4.4.6 where a square plate with a concentrated mass at the centre has been analysed. Material I Material II : E1 = 40 E2 , G12 = G13 = G23 = 0.5 E2 , 12 = 0.25. : E1 = 60.7 GPa, E2 = 24.8 GPa, G12 = 12.0 GPa, 12 = 0.23.

Material III : E1 = 25 E2 , G12 = G13 = 0.5 E2 , G23 = 0.2 E2 , 12 = 0.25.

Except in Sec. 4.4.5 (Table 4.26) all frequencies have been expressed in the non-dimensional form : = a2

where a is the dimension of the plate in the x-direction, h is its thickness, and is the mass density of the material. E1 (1 12 21 ) In Sec. 4.4.5, the form used is : # = a2 . h

E2 , h

In the rst example in Sec. 4.4.1, two particular studies are made : (a) convergence of the results obtained in the present investigation is studied by exploring a large number of mesh divisions, and (b) the improvement obtained by the inclusion of rotary inertia in the mass matrix is investigated. The subsequent examples have been solved with mesh sizes chosen accordingly and using only the mass lumping scheme B. (Examples using a consistent mass matrix have not been solved here; An extensive study in this respect has been made in Sec. 4.3.1.)

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

121

4.4.1 Simply supported cross-ply square laminated plate

A simply supported cross ply (0/ 90/ 90/ 0) square laminate has been analysed with a series of mesh divisions. The study has been made for a very thin plate, a thin plate, a moderately thick plate and a sufciently thick plate taking the thickness ratio (h/a) as 0.0001, 0.01, 0.1, and 0.2 respectively. Material I has been used in this example. The rst six frequencies obtained in all cases have been presented in Table 4.22 (a) (d). Table 4.22: Frequencies of a simply supported cross ply (0/ 90/ 90/ 0) square laminate
(a) Very thin plate (h/a = 0.0001)

References

Lumping Scheme A.
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)

18.713
18.839
18.867
18.875
18.878
18.713
18.839
18.867
18.875
18.878

33.499
33.688
33.756
33.783
33.795
33.499
33.688
33.756
33.783
33.795

65.820
65.858
65.957
66.004
66.028
65.820
65.858
65.957
66.004
66.028

67.580
68.307
68.483
68.548
68.579
67.580
68.307
68.483
68.548
68.579

73.859
74.853
75.212
75.357
75.428
73.859
74.853
75.212
75.357
75.428

94.995
95.247
95.750
95.992
96.114
94.995
95.247
95.750
95.992
96.114

Lumping Scheme B.

Comparison has been made with the fundamental frequencies of Reddy and Chao [122] obtained from their closed-form solution, and with the six frequencies obtained by Sheikh et al. [123] with a high precision nite element and the standard nine noded isoparametric bending element (Zienkiewicz [33]). The results obtained by the proposed element have a very good rate of convergence towards other results. Both the mass lumping schemes mentioned earlier have

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

122

been employed and their relative performances reveal a signicant improvement in result obtained by including rotary inertia in the mass formulation, specially in case of thick plates. Accuracies in the range of 0.2% for the fundamental frequency and within 0.5% for most higher frequencies is achieved in an 8 8 mesh. For a closer target or for abnormal conditions a higher mesh like 12 12 may be recommended for almost any example. Table 4.22: ( . . . Continued)
(b) Thin plate (h/a = 0.01)

References

Lumping Scheme A.
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Reddy and Chao [122] Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]

18.660
18.786
18.814
18.824
18.829
18.658
18.784
18.812
18.822
18.827

33.402
33.594
33.664
33.692
33.706
33.395
33.587
33.657
33.685
33.699

65.444
65.499
65.610
65.665
65.695
65.418
65.472
65.583
65.639
65.669

66.739
67.462
67.637
67.703
67.734
66.726
67.449
67.624
67.689
67.721

73.029
74.017
74.370
74.514
74.585
73.005
73.993
74.346
74.490
74.561

94.025
94.316
94.823
95.056
95.180
93.975
94.264
94.768
95.007
95.131

Lumping Scheme B.

Results of other authors

18.733
18.836
18.836

33.726
33.731

65.733
65.796

67.772
67.794

74.689
74.712

95.370
95.436

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

123

Table 4.22: ( . . . Continued)

(c) Medium thick plate (h/a = 0.1)

References

Lumping Scheme A.
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Reddy and Chao [122] Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]

15.102
15.182
15.200
15.206
15.209
15.030
15.111
15.128
15.134
15.137

24.307
24.328
24.332
24.333
24.334
24.307
24.328
24.332
24.333
24.334

24.307
24.328
24.332
24.333
24.334
24.307
24.328
24.332
24.333
24.334

27.084
27.305
27.362
27.384
27.394
26.830
27.052
27.110
27.132
27.143

36.575
36.886
36.952
36.976
36.988
36.415
36.725
36.792
36.816
36.827

43.142
43.570
43.745
43.732
43.775
42.769
43.191
43.350
43.352
43.390

Lumping Scheme B.

Results of other authors

15.145
15.141
15.143

24.330
24.335

24.330
24.335

27.140
27.165

36.727
36.853

43.243
43.422

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

124

Table 4.22: ( . . . Continued)

(d) Thick plate (h/a = 0.2)

References

Lumping Scheme A.
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Present (4 4)
Present (8 8)
Present (12 12)
Present (16 16)
Present (20 20)
Reddy and Chao [122] Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]

10.893
10.933
10.942
10.945
10.946
10.798
10.838
10.847
10.850
10.851

12.154
12.164
12.166
12.167
12.167
12.154
12.164
12.166
12.167
12.167

12.154
12.164
12.166
12.167
12.167
12.154
12.164
12.166
12.167
12.167

19.121
19.286
19.322
19.335
19.341
18.929
19.096
19.132
19.145
19.152

21.182
21.321
21.350
21.361
21.367
21.037
21.169
21.198
21.208
21.214

24.202
24.307
24.323
24.328
24.330
24.202
24.307
24.323
24.328
24.330

Lumping Scheme B.

Results of other authors

10.854
10.851
10.854

12.165
12.167

12.165
12.167

19.113
19.165

21.141
21.225

24.317
24.337

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

125

4.4.2 Angle ply rectangular laminated plates

In the second example a simply supported rectangular laminate with angle ply (45/ 45/ 45/ 45/ . . . ) has been considered where the number of layers has been taken as 2 and 10. The study has been made for three different aspect ratios (b/a) = 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0. Material I has been taken and the thickness ratio (h/a) of the laminate is taken to be 0.1. Results obtained are presented in Table 4.23. Comparison is made with the results of Reddy and Khdeir [124] for fundamental frequency, and with those of Sheikh et al. [123] for higher frequencies. Presence of in-plane modes have produced additional frequencies which do not match with the results of Sheikh et al. [123]. Numerical agreement with both the results is found to be very good.

4.4.3 Cross ply laminate having different boundary conditions

Cross ply (0/ 90/ 0) square laminates having different combination of clamped, simply supported, and free boundary conditions are studied in this example. Thickness ratio (h/a) of the plate is taken to be 0.1. The frequencies obtained are presented in Table 4.24 along with those of Khdeir and Librescu [125] and Sheikh et al. [123]. Results were also obtained by Sheikh et al. [123] by analysing the plate with a nine noded isoparametric element. The results are also presented in the table as IPBE-9. The results agree well in all the cases.

4.4.4 Simply supported skew laminates

The problem of a simply supported, angle ply (45/ 45) skew laminate as shown in Fig. 4.4 of page page 93 has been studied for different skew angles. As the sides BC and AD are inclined to the global axis system (xy ), necessary transformation has been made to express the degrees of freedom of the nodes on these two sides along 1-2 (Fig. 4.4). The transformation has been done in element level. Thickness ratio (h/a) is taken as 0.01 in all the cases.

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

126

Table 4.23: Frequencies of a simply supported angle-ply (45/ 45/ 45/ 45/ . . . ) rectangular laminate
(a) Two layers (45/ 45)

References

b/a = 1.0
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Reddy and Khdeir [124]
Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]

13.036
13.039
13.040
13.041
13.044
13.043
13.044

26.879
26.897
26.909
26.917

26.900
26.941
17.183
17.187
17.191
17.195
17.197
17.201
13.028
13.029
13.032
13.035

26.889
26.900
26.910
26.917

26.919
26.941
23.127
23.146
23.159
23.167
23.142
23.164
19.446
19.432
19.435
19.440
19.444
19.471

34.518
34.448
34.427
34.420

34.399
34.414
26.879
26.874
26.885
26.896
26.893
26.912
21.629
21.656
21.673
21.683
21.657
21.710

41.218
41.253
41.278
41.295

44.294
44.348
31.306
31.320
31.334
31.345
31.263
31.318
26.864
26.869
26.864
26.871
26.834
26.938

44.333
44.377
44.416
44.443

44.494
44.559
38.227
38.184
38.199
38.220
38.164
38.263
26.937
26.876
26.890
26.901
26.865
26.912

b/a = 1.5
9.4235
9.4254
9.4266
9.4274
9.4280
9.4290
b/a = 2.0
7.8856
7.8879
7.8894
7.8903
7.8910
7.8930

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

127

Table 4.23: ( . . . Continued)

(b) Ten layers (45/ 45/ 45/ 45/ . . . / 45)

References

b/a = 1.0
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Reddy and Khdeir [124]
Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]

19.347
19.361
19.368
19.372
19.289
19.378
19.381

34.563
34.464
34.435
34.424

24.503
24.552
24.577
24.592
24.604
24.630
19.274
19.315
19.335
19.348
19.355
19.382

35.825
35.906
35.948
35.973

35.869
35.921
31.601
31.691
31.739
31.767
31.680
31.714
27.078
27.172
27.225
27.259
24.284
27.374

35.848
35.923
35.961
35.983

36.027
36.044
35.662
35.788
35.859
35.904
35.942
36.065
29.891
30.006
30.064
30.099
29.999
30.194

51.277
51.451
51.532
51.577

51.196
51.388
40.658
40.793
40.858
40.895
40.698
40.743
35.196
34.694
34.535
34.475
35.766
35.416

54.959
55.189
55.314
55.391

55.061
55.345
44.155
44.118
44.109
44.107
48.495
48.677
35.466
35.643
35.741
35.805
35.870
36.045

b/a = 1.5
14.439
14.451
14.457
14.460
14.465
14.468
b/a = 2.0
12.216
12.229
12.236
12.240
12.245
12.249

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

128

Table 4.24: Frequencies of a cross-ply (0/ 90/ 0) square laminate (h/a = 0.1) with free edges
References
n
1
2
3
S-S-F-F
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Reddy and Khdeir [124]
Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Reddy and Khdeir [124]
Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Reddy and Khdeir [124]
Sheikh et al. [123]
IPBE-9 [93]

4.3387
4.3403
4.3411
4.3415
4.3430
4.3450
4.3430
19.607
19.633
19.645
19.652
19.669
19.659
19.669
7.3082
7.3187
7.3235
7.3261
7.3310
7.3300
7.3310

6.2629
6.2689
6.2694
6.2687

6.2520
6.2620
25.250
25.286
25.306
25.318
25.349
25.351
25.353
17.473
17.507
17.525
17.535
17.558
17.566
17.560

16.152
16.176
16.188
16.195
16.212
16.230
16.218
38.372
38.468
38.524
38.559
38.650
38.605
38.674
23.009
23.081
23.114
23.132

23.117
23.173

18.081
18.127
18.147
18.157

18.159
18.181
38.856
38.952
38.997
39.023

38.936
39.083
28.742
28.834
28.879
28.904

28.908
28.964

29.967
30.132
30.207
30.248

30.305
30.344
42.355
42.439
42.485
42.512

42.447
42.591
33.712
33.832
33.895
33.931
34.019
33.997
34.048

32.905
33.014
33.072
33.105
33.186
33.084
33.244
51.620
51.715
51.777
51.819

41.307
41.464
41.550
41.600

C-C-S-S

S-S-C-F

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

129

The rst six frequencies obtained in the present analysis have been presented in Table 4.25 with the fundamental frequencies of Krishna Reddy and Palaninathan [91]. For necessary comparison of all the frequencies, the results of Sheikh et al. [123] are presented in the same table along with those obtained by analysis with the nine noded isoparametric element. The table shows that the results obtained by the proposed element are in excellent agreement with the results of Sheikh et al. [123] and also with the ones obtained by the nine noded isoparametric element. Thus it seems that Krishna Reddy and Palaninathan [91] have somehow got lower values of the frequencies in their nite element analysis. The suspicion is aggravated by the fact that they have neither made convergence study with mesh division nor compared their results with standard results.

4.4.5 Cantilever triangular plates

A cantilever right triangular plate as shown in Fig. 4.6 has been taken in this example. The dimensions of the plate are in the ratio a/b = 1.0, and h/a = 0.01. Material II has been used in this example. The results are presented in Table 4.26, and compared with those of Liew and Chiam [126]. Good agreement is observed in all the cases.

4.4.6 Square laminate with a lumped mass at the plate centre

A simply supported square laminate has been considered having a concentrated mass of magnitude (i) half of, (ii) equal to, and (iii) double that of the plate located at the plate centre. The study has been made for cross ply (0/ 90) and angle ply (45/ 45) arrangements taking the properties of Material II . The thickness ratio (h/a) is taken to be 0.01. The results obtained with the proposed element have been presented in Table 4.27 with those of Sheikh et al. [123]. There is an excellent agreement between the results in all the cases.

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

130

Table 4.25: Frequencies of a simply supported cross-ply (45/ 45) skew laminate
References
n
1
2
3
4
5
6

= 30
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
K-R and P [91]
IPBE-9 [93]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
K-R and P [91]
IPBE-9 [93]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
K-R and P [91]
IPBE-9 [93]

15.638
15.630
15.625
15.623
15.62
15.20
15.61

32.423
32.414
32.415
32.417
32.36

32.36
35.242
35.235
35.236
35.238
35.19

35.12
44.897
44.889
44.891
44.893
45.04

44.75

38.636
38.582
38.558
38.545
38.38

38.48
49.455
49.262
49.148
49.069
49.50

48.53
68.985
68.875
68.836
68.815
69.85

68.73

55.496
55.441
55.432
55.433
55.53

55.51
57.564
57.505
57.489
57.484
57.73

57.44
73.241
72.781
72.490
72.280
73.57

70.66

66.209
66.098
66.081
66.083
65.98

65.99
78.438
78.283
78.247
78.235
78.43

78.03
94.828
94.639
94.603
94.598
97.30

94.84

73.503
73.289
73.224
73.196
73.35

73.30
83.202
83.060
83.034
83.034
83.83

83.18
107.63
107.26
107.13
107.06
109.1

106.5

= 45
19.217
19.192
19.174
19.162
19.17
18.50
19.06
= 60
27.490
27.401
27.340
27.297
27.37
26.50
27.01

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

131

Table 4.26: Frequencies # of a cantilever angle-ply (/ / / . . . ) triangular laminate

(a) Three layers (/ / )

References

n
= 30

Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Liew and Chiam [126]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Liew and Chiam [126]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Liew and Chiam [126]

4.1406
4.1400
4.1509
4.1526
4.1662

16.132
16.233
16.284
16.311
16.379

23.452
23.709
23.835
23.905
24.077

38.219
38.662
38.878
38.998
39.284

52.436
53.043
53.339
53.504
53.904

69.855
71.181
71.835
72.204
73.096

= 45
4.3728
4.3877
4.3813
4.4190
4.4024
= 60
4.7881
4.8135
4.8183
4.8165
4.8240

16.807
16.920
16.971
17.009
17.075

25.286
25.576
25.715
25.800
25.995

39.289
39.788
40.030
40.171
40.495

54.277
54.906
55.215
55.392
55.816

72.408
73.855
74.569
74.975
75.959

17.693
17.827
17.889
17.922
18.003

27.287
27.596
27.745
27.828
28.036

41.327
41.898
42.176
42.331
42.703

57.054
57.738
58.078
58.269
58.735

76.376
77.883
78.619
79.032
80.013

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

132

Table 4.26: ( . . . Continued)

(b) Five layers (/ / / / )

References

n
= 30

Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Liew and Chiam [126]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Liew and Chiam [126]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Liew and Chiam [126]

4.2423
4.2472
4.2586
4.2623
4.2615

16.780
16.883
16.935
16.963
17.029

23.833
24.093
24.220
24.290
24.466

39.820
40.259
40.472
40.591
40.886

53.994
54.641
54.956
55.132
55.583

72.556
73.871
74.519
74.884
75.816

= 45
4.5717
4.5839
4.5907
4.5914
4.5999
= 60
5.0490
5.0621
5.0646
5.0628
5.0810

17.779
17.895
17.950
17.973
18.056

25.704
25.998
26.141
26.214
26.425

41.404
41.898
42.137
42.268
42.605

56.661
57.342
57.675
57.860
58.343

75.190
76.635
77.347
77.746
78.777

18.671
18.807
18.871
18.906
18.996

27.739
28.048
28.197
28.279
28.493

43.035
43.594
43.866
44.016
44.394

59.983
60.694
61.044
61.240
61.742

77.921
79.460
80.210
80.630
81.703

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

133

Table 4.27: Frequencies of a simply supported square laminate having a concentrated mass M at the plate centre
(a) Cross ply (0/ 90)

References

M/a2 h = 0.5
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]

5.4662
5.4661
5.4661
5.4660
5.470

26.733
26.725
26.728
26.731
26.745

26.735
26.729
26.731
26.733
26.746

33.555
33.387
33.315
33.275
32.245

38.678
38.612
38.606
38.610
38.639

57.058
56.945
56.929
56.931
56.982

M/a2 h = 1.0
4.1955
4.1949
4.1946
4.1944
4.195

26.733
26.725
26.728
26.731
26.753

26.735
26.729
26.731
26.733
26.753

31.605
31.436
31.363
31.321
31.273

38.678
38.612
38.606
38.610
38.658

57.058
56.945
56.929
56.932
57.002

M/a2 h = 2.0
3.1061
3.1052
3.1049
3.1046
3.105

26.733
26.725
26.728
26.731
26.753

26.735
26.729
26.731
26.733
26.753

30.529
30.360
30.287
30.246
30.195

38.678
38.612
38.606
38.610
38.658

57.058
56.945
56.929
56.933
57.002

C H : 4. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION

134

Table 4.27: ( . . . Continued)

(b) Angle ply (45/ 45)

References

M/a2 h = 0.5
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]
Present (6 6)
Present (8 8)
Present (10 10)
Present (12 12)
Sheikh et al. [123]

6.8573
6.8538
6.8522
6.8514
6.851

28.572
28.563
28.564
28.567
28.588

28.581
28.566
28.566
28.567
28.588

32.647
32.537
32.494
32.471
32.465

49.266
49.173
49.149
49.142
49.169

53.353
53.264
53.257
53.266
53.361

M/a2 h = 1.0
5.2320
5.2283
5.2267
5.2257
5.225

28.572
28.563
28.565
28.567
28.588

28.581
28.566
28.565
28.567
28.588

30.991
30.879
30.833
30.809
30.797

49.266
49.173
49.149
49.142
49.169

53.353
53.264
53.257
53.265
53.361

M/a2 h = 2.0
3.8573
3.8541
3.8526
3.8518
3.851

28.572
28.563
28.565
28.567
28.588

28.581
28.566
28.565
28.567
28.588

30.089
29.977
29.931
29.906
29.891

49.266
49.173
49.149
49.142
49.169

53.353
53.264
53.257
53.265
53.361

Chapter 5

Conclusion N
OW THAT THE concluding part of the thesis is at hand,

a conclusive statement is naturally demanded. But the best way to arrive at it, and the most convincing manner at least from the Aristotelian syllogistic point of approach of drawing a rational conclusion, is to start from the premises of such reasoning. And the premises, here, could be nothing outside the sum total of the research work pursued and presented in this dissertation. From this consideration, the presentation heretofore might reasonably call for a quick recollection in a nutshell.

5.1 Summary of the present work

The research work reported in the present thesis has proceeded along the following lines : A new nite element has been developed for the analysis of isotropic and composite plates of low to moderate thickness. It is a displacement type element with the effect of shear deformation included in the formulation according to ReissnerMindlins theory. The geometry of the element is an arbitrary triangle, enabling it to model plates of practically any shape. 135

C H : 5. C ONCLUSION

136

The proposed element is simple and elegant, containing six nodes with the usual degrees of freedom at each node inplane displacements u and v , transverse displacement w, and rotations of the normal x and y . The eld variables taken in the formulation are the translations u, v , w, and the rotations of the normal due to shear x and y . Complete quadratic polynomials have been used to represent u and v , a complete quartic polynomial for w, while x , y have been approximated by complete linear polynomials. The key concept in the formulation of the element lies in taking the shear rotations x and y as independent eld variables instead of the total rotations x and y . Formulation of the stiffness matrix is quite easy and straightforward, involving no modications like reduced integration or hourglass stabilisation. Two new schemes have been proposed for the formulation of lumped mass matrix, of which one includes the contribution of rotary inertia. The element proposed in the present formulation is a nonconforming element. The element does not possess any spurious rigid body modes and shows no signs of shear locking. It passes the patch test for constant moment, shear and twist. The newly developed element is applied to static and free vibration analysis of plates. A computer code has been developed in FORTRAN for the implementation. Performance of the element has been investigated in a wide range of problems involving static and dynamic analysis of isotropic and composites plates with different shapes and thicknesses, ply-orientations or internal discontinuities, subjected to various loading or boundary conditions. Results obtained has been compared with results from standard literature.

C H : 5. C ONCLUSION

137

5.2 Conclusion
The following conclusions have been reached regarding the different aspects that were studied in the present discourse. In the eld of plate bending, where no element is known to have emerged as the best or comprehensive enough for the entire range of problems, a new element has been proposed. An arbitrary triangular shape of the element makes it quite adaptable in solving problems with different shapes of the plate. The simple distribution of nodes and degrees of freedom in the element enables it to be used in conjunction with other standard elements, as is often the case in most practical problems. Inclusion of shear deformation in the formulation of the element allows it to be applicable to thick as well as composite plates the latter being largely used in the industry recently. Absence of shear locking makes the element readily applicable to the analysis of extremely thin plate problems as well. Representing the eld variables with polynomials of proper order has ensured a correct hierarchy of deection, rotation, moment and shear, and in turn helps to avert shear locking. Taking linear shear rotations x and y as independent eld variables instead of the third order x and y reduces the degrees of freedom necessary for exactly representing a fourth order displacement eld and helps to achieve a high order of accuracy with relatively less computational effort. The absence of zero energy modes precludes the necessity of any kind of stabilisation technique in the element formulation. Formulation of the element being simple, the element may be implemented in a computer program with little effort and incorporated into a general purpose design package. The element, regardless of its non-conformity, passes the patch test and shows excellent convergence of results in the

C H : 5. C ONCLUSION

138

most diverse plate bending problems. Rectangular, square, rhombic and triangular plates analysed with the element produce excellent results in agreement with those of other authors. Internal discontinuities like a central hole or a concentrated load poses no problem and gives good results in every case. Plates with all possible combination of boundary conditions including simply supported, clamped and free edges, and the symmetry condition, are quite satisfactorily analysed with the element showing good agreement of results. Different stacking sequences symmetric or anti-symmetric, angle-ply or cross-ply, with varying number of laminae in all cases, gives good results for both static and dynamic analysis. Various loading distributions used in static analysis, including uniformly distributed load, sinusoidal load or concentrated load, does not degrade the performance of the element. Deection, moment and shear stresses computed using the proposed element agree excellently with published results in case of static analysis of both isotropic and composite plates. The computed values of the rst few frequencies in the free vibration analysis of isotropic and composite plates show good agreement with the results obtained by other authors. The procedures for mass lumping proposed in this thesis, specially the one including the effect of rotary inertia, shows a considerable improvement of results over the existing schemes.

5.3 Scope of future work

The research work that has been reported so far may be considered comprehensive in many respects, but in no way complete. Rather it is expected to open up several avenues for further research, a few of which may be enlisted in the following points.

C H : 5. C ONCLUSION

139

The element developed in the present investigation may be mapped onto a curved boundary, similar to the isoparametric element, for analysis of plates with curved edges, such as circular or elliptical plates or ones containing circular holes. The proposed element may be extended to develop a simple shell element for the analysis of shallow shells, by incorporating curvatures in the geometry of the element. The element may be formulated from different considerations as well, like the assumed hybrid stress or enhanced assumed strain approaches where the incompatible modes do not arise, and the results may be compared with those obtained in the present analysis. Keeping in view the recent development of mesh-free Galerkin methods and the advantages offered by them, particularly in solving problems in critical elds, the concept of taking low order independent shear rotations x and y may be implemented in a mesh-free model with suitable least square projections. From the aspect of application to different problems, the element may be used in the analysis of forced vibration of structures, both in case of steady state and transient problems. Problems of random vibration may also be analysed with the proposed element by taking suitable probabilistic distribution of loads with time and over the area of the continuum. Geometric and material nonlinearities may be comfortably handled with the element to analyse problems of large deformation, large rotation, or in cases of viscoelastic bodies where the Poissons ratio is very nearly 0.5. Buckling analysis of plates or other two-dimensional structures may be performed with the element presented in this study without any difculty. Dynamic instability problems like utter may be analysed with the present element for its demanding utility in aerospace, marine or turbo applications dealing with high speed components.

Publications
t A. H. Sheikh and P. Dey. A new triangular element for the analysis of thick and thin plates. Communications in Numerical Methods in Engineering, 17 : 667-673, 2001. t A. H. Sheikh, P. Dey, and D. Sengupta. Vibration of thick and thin plates using a new triangular element. Journal of Engineering Mechanics, ASCE, 129 : 1235-1244, 2003.

140

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