The structure of the solution of the Reissner–Mindlin plate equations is investigated, emphasizing its dependence on the plate thickness. For the transverse displacement, rotation, and shear stress, asymptotic expansions in powers of the plate thickness are developed. These expansions are uniform up to the boundary for the transverse displacement, but for the other variables there is a boundary...

We use the three-dimensional Hellinger}Reissner mixed variational principle to derive a Kth order (K"0, 1, 2,2) shear and normal deformable plate theory. The balance laws, the constitutive relations and the boundary conditions for the plate theory are deduced. The constitutive relations incorporate the shear and the normal tractions applied on the top and the bottom surfaces of the plate. For a...

In a previous paper from the authors, the bounds from Kelsey et al. (1958) were applied to a sandwich panel including a folded core in order to estimate its shear forces stiffness (Lebée and Sab, 2010b). The main outcome was the large discrepancy of the bounds. Recently, Lebée and Sab (2011a) suggested a new plate theory for thick plates –the Bending-Gradient plate theory– which is the extensio...

The effects of selected membrane, plate and flat shell finite element formulations on optimal topologies are numerically investigated. Two different membrane components are considered. The first is a standard 4-node bilinear quadrilateral, and the other is a 4-node element accounting for in-plane (drilling) rotations. Plate elements selected for evaluation include discrete Kirchhoff quadrilater...

The nite element method with rectangular meshes for the Reissner-Mindlin plate is analyzed. For a plate with thickness bounded below by a positive constant (moderately thick plate), derivative superconvergence of the nite element solution at the Gaussian points is justiied and optimal error estimates for both rotation and displacement are established.

This paper deals with the approximation of the buckling coefficients and modes of a clamped plate modeled by the Reissner-Mindlin equations. These coefficients are related with the eigenvalues of a non-compact operator. We give a spectral characterization of this operator and show that the relevant buckling coefficients correspond to isolated nondefective eigenvalues. Then we consider the numer...

Efficient finite element (FE) analyses of Reissner-Mindlin (RM) plate bending problems require a combination of high-order polynomial trial functions (p-extension) and locally refined meshes, or, in short, an hp-extension of the FE method. In the optimal case, exponential rates in the convergence of the error in energy norm can be obtained by such a discretization. This contribution discusses s...

A meshless local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) method is applied to solve problems of Reissner-Mindlin shells under thermal loading. Both stationary and thermal shock loads are analyzed here. Functionally graded materials with a continuous variation of properties in the shell thickness direction are considered here. A weak formulation for the set of governing equations in the Reissner-Mindlin theory i...

This paper deals with the numerical approximation of the bending of a plate modeled by Reissner-Mindlin equations. It is well known that, in order to avoid locking, some kind of reduced integration or mixed interpolation has to be used when solving these equations by finite element methods. In particular, one of the most widely used procedures is based on the family of elements called MITC (mix...

Elastic plates can be described by a two-dimensional theory, if the characteristic length of the stress state along the plate, l; is much bigger than the plate thickness, h: If all elastic moduli of a laminated plate are of the same order, no matter how many lamina the plate has, then the normal to the mid-surface of the plane remain normal in the course of deformation, and the deformation of t...