Efficient hybrid quadrilateral Kirchhoff plate bending element

Abstract

This paper discusses the formulation of a hybrid stress quadrilateral Kirchhoff plate bending element based on an extended complementary energy functional first proposed by Tong. With the inclusion of a Lagrange multiplier in the functional to enforce a constraint on the assumed moment space, the construction of the C1 deflection profile inside the element is no longer necessary. The continuity requirement on the deflection across the element interfaces is fulfilled by interpolating the generalized nodal displacements over the element boundary in the usual way. Special attention is paid to the selection of assumed moment space such that the element stability, convergency, invariance and nodal point numbering insensitivity are secured while the implementational cost of the element is kept low. Quadratic serendipity interpolation of the transverse deflection is adopted to discretize the distributed transverse loading. Numerical examples are presented and the accuracy achieved is found to be satisfactory.