DETERMINATION OF INTER-BOUNDARY AND FREE-BOUNDARY STRESSES IN PLATE ANALYSIS

The conventional finite-element method shows its weakness in determini ng the stress distributions along free- and interboundaries for plate (facet shell) analysis. This is because the chosen element displacemen t and rotation functions do not implicitly satisfy the conditions that prevail at the boundaries. A procedure has been proposed to modify th e conventional finite-element method so as to allow the elastic stress es along the free- and interboundaries of plates to be determined with improved accuracy. The results obtained by this modified method are c ompared with both an experimental and a traditional finite-clement sol ution. The comparison shows that the modified solution is in better ag reement with the experimental test data as compared with the tradition al solution. The computation time required to perform the additional c alculations for determining free- and interboundary stresses with impr oved accuracy is only a small fraction of that required for the comple te finite-element analysis.