DEVELOPMENT OF A SIMPLIFIED PLATE ELEMENT FOR LARGE DEFLECTION ELASTOPLASTIC FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS

Numerous researchers have performed large deflection elasto-plastic fi nite element analysis of stiffened plate structures, using plate eleme nts which employed various iterative/incremental procedures for nonlin ear analysis. However, such analysis always requires a large number of plate elements, which become a heavy burden on the computer in terms of computation time and disk storage. Fortunately, the problem can be reduced by employing the one-dimensional version of plate elements to simulate the stiffeners of stiffened plate structures. This type of el ement has been developed in the present study, by employing the multi- layer approach which allows yielding at different Levels of the plate element. Special care has been taken to avoid the ''self-straining'' p roblem of plate elements. Moreover, an improved iterative/incremental procedure has been proposed to establish a more reliable and accurate solution. The results obtained by employing this element type for a te st example are found to be in good agreement with those obtained by ot her authors using traditional large deflection elasto-plastic finite e lement analysis. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.