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Buckling analysis of mindlin plates with internal cutouts by the moving least square element method

Plates are common structural elements with wide applications in civil, mechanical, aerospace and marine engineering fields. Internal cutouts are often introduced in plates due to serviceability requirements. These cutouts may significantly change the mechanical behaviors of plates and reduce their loading carrying capacity.

The buckling behaviors of moderately thick plates with internal cutouts are investigated by employing the moving least square element (MLS-element) method. The Mindlin shear deformable plate theory is employed in this study. The moving least square (MLS) interpolation technique, which is commonly used in the meshless method, is utilized to derive the shape functions for the displacement fields of a plate element. It is well known that the nominal nodal displacements in the MLS interpolation are not the actual displacements at the nodes and they cannot be used to enforce the boundary conditions of the plate or the connectivity conditions between elements. A special technique is developed to overcome this difficulty so that the actual displacements at the nodes on the element edges can be employed to impose the boundary conditions and maintain the connectivity between elements. The proposed MLS-element method takes the advantages of both finite element method and the meshless method. Convergence and comparison studies on buckling of Mindlin plates are carried out to examine the efficiency and accuracy of the MLS-element method. Buckling solutions for plates with internal cutouts are presented and the influence of cutouts on the plate buckling behavors is discussed in details.

Author(s):

Yang Xiang    
University of Western Sydney
Australia