A NEW LAMINATED TRIANGULAR FINITE-ELEMENT ASSURING INTERFACE CONTINUITY FOR DISPLACEMENTS AND STRESSES

The objective of this paper is to present a new 81-degrees-of-freedom finite element for geometrically and materially linear elastic multila yered composite, moderately thick plates. The element is a six nodes C -1 triangular element based on a new kind of kinematics and built from Argyris interpolation for bending, and Ganev interpolation for membra ne displacements and transverse shear rotations. The kinematics allow both, the continuity conditions for displacements and transverse shear stresses at the interfaces between layers of a laminated structure, a nd the boundary conditions at the upper and lower surfaces of the plat es, to be exactly ensured. The representation of the transverse shear strains by cosine functions allows one to avoid shear correction facto rs. The element performances are evaluated on some standard plate test s and also in comparison with an exact three-dimensional solution for multilayered plates both for statics and dynamics. (C) 1997 Elsevier S cience Ltd.