BENDING ANALYSIS OF RECTANGULAR MODERATELY THICK PLATES USING SPLINE FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD

A bending analysis of rectangular, moderately thick plates with genera l boundary conditions is presented using the spline element method. Th e cubic B spline interpolate functions are used to construct the field function of generalized displacements w, phi(x) and phi(y). The splin e finite element equations are derived based on the potential energy p rinciple. For simplicity, the boundary conditions, which consist of th ree local spline points, are amended to fit specified boundary conditi ons. The shear effect is considered in the formulations. A number of n umerical examples are described for rectangular, moderately thick plat es. Since the cubic B spline interpolate functions have sufficient con tinuity and are piecewise polynomial, so the present numerical solutio ns show not only that the method gives accurate results, but also that the unified solutions of thick and thin plates can be directly obtain ed; the trouble with the so-called shear locking phenomenon does not o ccur here.