Development of a simplified plate element for large deflection elasto-plastic finite element analysis

Abstract

Numerous researchers have performed large deflection elasto-plastic finite element analysis of stiffened plate structures, using plate elements which employed various iterative/incremental procedures for nonlinear analysis. However, such analysis always requires a large number of plate elements, which become a heavy burden on the computer in terms of computation time and disk storage. Fortunately, the problem can be reduced by employing the one-dimensional version of plate elements to simulate the stiffeners of stiffened plate structures. This type of element has been developed in the present study, by employing the multi-layer approach which allows yielding at different levels of the plate element. Special care has been taken to avoid the "self-straining" problem of plate elements. Moreover, an improved iterative/incremental procedure has been proposed to establish a more reliable and accurate solution. The results obtained by employing this element type for a test example are found to be in good agreement with those obtained by other authors using traditional large deflection elasto-plastic finite element analysis. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.