As a force-based finite element method (FEM), large increment method (LIM) has been developed in recent years. It has been shown that LIM provided prominent advantage of parallel computation with high efficiency and low time consumption for member structural system. To fully utilize its advantage in parallel computation, it is the time to extend LIM to 2D and 3D continua analysis. In this paper, a 2D finite element library with the capability of modeling arbitrary configurations is developed. Some illustrative numerical examples are solved by using the proposed library; the obtained results are compared with those obtained from both traditional displacement-based FEM and analytical solutions, which has clearly shown the advantages of LIM.
Many displacement-based quadrilateral plate elements based on Mindlin-Reissner plate theory have been proposed to analyze the thin and moderately thick plate problems. However, numerical inaccuracies of some elements appear since the presence of shear locking and spurious zero energy modes for thin plate problems. To overcome these shortcomings, we employ the large increment method(LIM) for the analyses of the plate bending problems, and propose a force-based 8-node quadrilateral plate(8NQP) element which is based on MindlinReissner plate theory and has no extra spurious zero energy mode. Several benchmark plate bending problems are presented to illustrate the accuracy and convergence of the plate element by comparing with the analytical solutions and displacement-based plate elements. The results show that the 8-node plate element produces fast convergence and accurate stress distributions in both the moderately thick and thin plate bending problems. The plate element is insensitive to mesh distortion and it can avoid the shear locking for thin plate analysis.
A force-based quadrilateral plate element( 4NQP13) for the analysis of the plate bending problems using large increment method( LIM) was proposed. The LIM, a force-based finite element method( FEM),has been successfully developed for the analysis of truss,beam,frame,and 2D continua problems. In these analyses,LIMcan provide more precise stress results and less computational time consumption compared with displacement-based FEM. The plate element was based on the Mindlin-Reissner plate theory which took into account the transverse shear effects.Numerical examples were presented to study its performance including accuracy and convergence behavior,and the results were compared with the results have been obtained from the displacementbased quadrilateral plate elements and the analytical solutions. The4NQP13 element can analyze the moderately thick plates and the thin plates using LIMand is free from spurious zero energy modes and free from shear locking for thin plate analysis.
