ANALYSIS OF ORTHOTROPIC PLATE-FOUNDATION INTERACTION BY MIXED FINITE-ELEMENT FORMULATION USING GATEAUX DIFFERENTIAL

In mixed finite element formulation, the fundamental difference among the various approaches depend on the variational principles such as th e Hellinger-Reissner, the Hu-Washizu and the Gateaux differential whic h is introduced by Omurtag et al. [5-9] to the literature in the recen t years. In this paper, a functional for interaction of orthotropic pl ate-foundation is obtained by using the Gateaux differential and recta ngular mixed finite elements PLTEOR4 and PLTEOR9 are formulated explic itly. Foundation is modeled as a Pasternak type which can be either is otropic or orthotropic and as a special case it converges to Winkler f oundation if the shear layer is neglected. Using the mathematical adva ntages of the proposed variational method a functional with proper geo metric and dynamic boundary conditions, introduced from the field equa tions of the plate and the foundation, is explicitly given. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.