Dragan Ribarić

Higher-order linked interpolation in triangular thick plate finite elements

Purpose – In this work, the authors aim to employ the so-called linked-interpolation concept already tested on beam and quadrilateral plate finite elements in the design of displacement-based higher-order triangular plate finite elements and test their performance. Design/methodology/approach – Starting from the analogy between the Timoshenko beam theory and the Mindlin plate theory, a family of triangular linked-interpolation plate finite elements of arbitrary order are designed. The elements are tested on the standard set of examples. Findings – The derived elements pass the standard patch tests and also the higher-order patch tests of an order directly related to the order of the element. The lowest-order member of the family of developed elements still suffers from shear locking for very coarse meshes, but the higher-order elements turn out to be successful when compared to the elements from literature for the problems with the same total number of the degrees of freedom. Research limitations/implicat...