A SIMPLE ASSUMED STRAIN METHOD FOR ENHANCING THE ACCURACY OF THE CUBIC TRIANGULAR C-0 PLATE-BENDING ELEMENT

The conventional cubic triangular Mindlin/Reissner plate bending eleme nt, DISP10, is in general too stiff. To reduce the element stiffness, three of the strain sampling points are shifted from the integration s tations to the element corners so as to reduce the number of shear con straints in the global level. The strain held is then obtained by inte rpolation. In this way, the constraint ratio of the element increases from 1.125 to 1.5 which is exactly equal to a postulated optimal value . However, the element does not appear to be more accurate than its co nventional counterpart. While keeping the constraint ratio and interpo lation pivots unchanged, two different ways of refining the sampled st rains at the element corners are attempted and the pertinent elements are consistently more accurate than DISP10. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.