A. Venkatesh et J. Jirousek, ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF LOCAL-EFFECTS DUE TO CONCENTRATED AND DISCONTINUOUS LOADS IN HYBRID-TREFFTZ PLATE-BENDING ELEMENTS, Computers & structures, 57(5), 1995, pp. 863-870
As opposed to conventional conforming elements, the assumed displaceme
nt field of a hybrid-Trefftz (HT) element must accurately satisfy the
differential equilibrium conditions while the conformity is then impos
ed in a weighted residual sense. Unlike the homogeneous part of the el
ement displacement field, the particular load-dependent part may be re
presented, in the case of a concentrated or a discontinuous load, by a
suitable local solution extending either over the whole plate or conf
ined to a patch of elements in the vicinity of the load. The main adva
ntage of such an approach is that the FE mesh and, to a large extent,
also the solution accuracy are independent of the load. The paper pres
ents explicit expression of local solutions for a line load and a patc
h load which are of particular interest to plate bending analysis in t
he engineering practice. The accuracy and efficiency of the approach a
re assessed in a series of benchmark problems.