The design of locking-free reduced-shear plate elements

Prof. Manil Suri

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore

We present a new technique for the derivation and analysis of locking-free plate elements. Unlike previous indirect approaches based on a Hemholtz Decomposition of the shear, our approach gives direct conditions on how the shear should be reduced to ensure optimal approximation and consistency errors. Explicit guidelines on the reduction operator to ensure uniform resolution of the boundary layer are formulated. Both straight and curved elements (such as MITC) are addressed. Some preliminary extensions of this technique to shells are discussed.