Differential quadrature element method for static analysis of Reissner-Mindlin polar plates

In this paper, a new numerical technique, the differential quadrature eleme nt method (DQEM), has been developed for static analysis of the two-dimensi onal polar Reissner-Mindlin plate in the polar coordinate system by integra ting the domain decomposition method (DDM) with the differential quadrature method (DQM). The detailed formulations for the sectorial DQEM plate bendi ng element and the compatibility conditions between each element are presen ted. The convergence properties and the accuracy of the DQEM for bending of thick polar plates are investigated through a number of numerical computat ions. Consequently, the DQEM has been successfully applied to analyze sever al annular sector plates with discontinuous loading and boundary conditions and cutouts to illustrate the simplicity and flexibility of this method fo r solving Reissner-Mindlin plates in polar coordinate system which are not solvable directly using the differential quadrature method. The numerical r esults are verified by the existing exact solutions or the FEM solutions ob tained using the software package ANSYS (Version 5.3). (C) 1999 Elsevier Sc ience Ltd. All rights reserved.