UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT DENVER

PLACE: Mathematics Conference Room 626 UCD Building, 1250 14th St., Denver

TIME: 2 pm (Refreshments served at 1:45 pm)

DATE: August 3 1999

Stabilized Reissner-Mindlin Plate Elements 

Mikko Lyly 

Technical Research Center of Finland 
Maritime and Mechanical Engineering 
P.O.Box 1705, FIN-02044 VTT, Finland 



ABSTRACT. In this seminar we will present some recent stabilized 
finite element formulations for the plate bending model of Reissner 
and Mindlin [1]. We first consider the mixed stabilized formulation 
of Hughes and Franca [2] and show how this leads to a new method in 
displacement variables only. The drawback here is that the methods 
utilize unequal interpolation for the deflection and rotation. We 
then show that equal interpolation is possible with all polynomial 
degrees if the stabilization technique is combined with a special 
covariant interpolation,the so called MITC interpolation technique 
of Bathe, Brezzi and Fortin [3]. The performance of the methods will 
be demonstrated by numerical examples. 



[1] M. Lyly and R. Stenberg. Stabilized finite element methods 
for Reissner-Mindlin plates. Research report 4-1999, Institute 
for Mathematic and Geometriy, Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck. 

\noindent [2] T.J.R. Hughes and L.P.Franca. A mixed finite element 
formulation for Reissner-Mindlin plate theoty: Uniform convergence 
of all higher order spaces. Comp. Meths. Appl. Mech. Engrg., 67:223- 
240, 1988. 

[3] K.J. Bathe, F. Brezzi and M. Fortin. Mixed interpolated elements 
for Reissner-Mindlin plates. Int. J. Num. Meths. Eng., 28:1787-1801, 
1989.