AN EFFECTIVE QUADRILATERAL PLATE BENDING ELEMENT

An effective arbitrary quadrilateral thin plate bending element with a quasi-conforming, QCQ element, is presented in this paper. The elements pass the patch test with constant strain and the patch test with linear strains approximately. When the element degenerates to a rectangle the patch test with linear strains is passed. The calculation of the element stiffness matrix is simple without numerical integration. The numerical examples show that the QCQ element has a higher accuracy and a faster convergence rate.