An Improved Four-Node Element For Analysis of Composite Plate Shell

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Article Title: An Improved Four-Node Element for Analysis of Composite Plate/Shell

Structures Based on Twice Interpolation Strategy
Author(s): Hoang Lan Ton-That, Hieu Nguyen-Van, Thanh Chau-Dinh
DOI: 10.1142/S0219876219500208
Received: 23 September 2018

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Accepted: 21 February 2019
To be cited as: Hoang Lan Ton-That, Hieu Nguyen-Van, Thanh Chau-Dinh, An Improved
Four-Node Element for Analysis of Composite Plate/Shell Structures
Based on Twice Interpolation Strategy, International Journal of Com-
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International Journal of Computational Methods
World Scientific Publishing Company
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AN IMPROVED FOUR-NODE ELEMENT FOR ANALYSIS OF COMPOSITE
PLATE/SHELL STRUCTURES BASED ON TWICE INTERPOLATION
STRATEGY
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HOANG LAN TON-THAT
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education,
01 Vo Van Ngan Street, Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam.
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture,
196 Pasteur Street, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam.
HIEU NGUYEN-VAN*
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Faculty of Civil Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture,
196 Pasteur Street, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam.
THANH CHAU-DINH
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education,
01 Vo Van Ngan Street, Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam.
Received (Day Month Year)

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Revised (Day Month Year)
This paper deals with numerical linear analyses of laminated composite

plate/shell structures. The method is based on a four-node quadrilateral element,
namely SQ4T, within the framework of the first-order shear deformation theory
(FSDT). This element is established by incorporating the twice interpolation
strategy (TIS) into a traditional four-node finite element to build the membrane,
bending and shear stiffness matrices. Many desirable characteristics of this
efficient numerical method are shown as continuous nodal gradients, higher-
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order polynomial basis, no increase in number of the degree of freedom of the

system. The performance of the proposed element is validated and demonstrated
through several numerical benchmark problems. Convergence studies and
comparison with other existing solutions in the literature suggest that the present
element is efficient, accurate and free of lockings.
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Keywords: flat element, twice interpolation strategy (TIS), shear-locking free,

first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT).
*
Corresponding author: Hieu Nguyen-Van (hieu.nguyenvan@uah.edu.vn), Tel.: + 84938123299.
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2 Hoang Lan Ton-That, Hieu Nguyen-Van and Thanh Chau-Dinh
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1. Introduction
It is well known that laminate composite materials are nowadays commonly used in
aeronautical, aerospace, naval and other industries mainly because of the attractive
properties as compared to isotropic materials, such as higher stiffness/weight, higher
strength, higher damping and good properties related to thermal or acoustic isolation,
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among others. Accurate prediction of these structural behaviors is a challenging problem
for the analysis of laminated composites due to the anisotropic structural behaviors.
There are many theories developed for analysis from thin to thick laminated composite
plate and shell structures such as the classical plate theory (CPT), the first-order shear
deformation theory (FSDT), the higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT), the
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layer-wise theory (LWT) and so on. Among these theories,the FSDT is often used
because of its simplicity and the ability of simulating the shear deformation effects
through shear correction factors (SCFs). These factors can be calculated by using some
special procedures (Vlachoutsis, 1992), (Chatterjee and Kulkarni, 1979), (Whitney, 1973),
(Providas and Kattis, 2000), (Choi and Lee, 2003) and (Darılmaz and Kumbasar, 2006).
With these factors, the use of FSDT becomes more reasonable in applications. In the
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other hands, numerical methods such as finite element methods (FEM) have been
developed and widely used for the analysis of laminated composite plate/shell structures.
A recent review of the development of laminated composite plate/shell finite elements
was presented by (Yang et al., 2000), (Leissa, 1987), (Aydogdu, 2006), (Liew et al., 1993,
Liew et al., 1994, Liew et al., 1995, Liew and Teo, 1999, Liew et al., 1999), (Thai et al.,
2014), (Nguyen-Van et al., 2014.), (Marjanović and Vuksanović, 2016), (Phan-Dao et al.,
2016), (Useche and Medina, 2018), (Thai et al., 2017), (Tran et al., 2017), (Wan et al.,
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2017) and so on. In the standard FEM frameworks, the gradients on the element-edges
using the constant-strain elements or mapped elements are discontinuous. One possibility
among others that can completely overcome such discontinuities is the novel twice
interpolation strategy (TIS) proposed by (Wu et al., 2012, Zheng et al., 2010). The main
idea of this technique is to build the trial function by taking the continuous nodal
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gradients and a higher-order polynomial basis. For detail, the trial function for the
Galerkin weak form is constructed through two stages of sequential interpolation. Similar
to the standard finite element method, the TIS is based on a mesh with the unknowns
being the nodal displacements. The trial functions are obtained by interpolations
according to nodal displacements and are represented as C0 functions on the element
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An improved four-node element for analysis of composite plate/shell structures 3
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edges. The first stage of TIS is the same as that of the standard FEM, but the averaged
nodal gradients must be computed for the second stage of the interpolation, unlike with
the second stage of the interpolation for the Hermite finite element method. Then, the
approximation functions can be further rebuilt, in which both the nodal displacement and
average gradients are selected as the interpolation conditions. Thus, the shape functions
constructed by the twice interpolation steps, exhibit more continuous nodal gradients and
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higher-order polynomial contrast compared to the standard finite element method when
analyzing the same mesh. Many desirable characteristics can be reached such as: (a) high
accuracy in the field variables; (b) high convergence rate; (c) the total number of the
degree of freedom of the system does not change and (d) shape functions with higher
order polynomials possess the Kronecker-delta function property. In (Zheng et al., 2010),
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the authors used TIS into triangular elements to solve several benchmark examples and a
real dam problem. The twice interpolation strategy (TIS) is firstly applied on simplex
elements and it is observed that high accuracy can be achieved. Their work is further
developed for 2D fracture problems into ALOF software (Wu et al., 2012). In addition,
the TIS is firstly used into a quadrilateral element by (QuocBui et al., 2014) for 2D
problems. In the reference (QuocBui et al., 2014) the authors examined four benchmarks
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and two practical examples for the stress analysis of elastic structures in two-dimension
to show the accuracy and the efficiency of their element.
Inspired by the idea using TIS, this research will result in a further development of the
TIS technique into the conventional four-node finite element model to enhance accuracy
for linear bending, free vibration and buckling analysis of laminated composite plate and
shell structures. The proposed element, namely SQ4T, is obtained by incorporating the
TIS technique into a flat finite element approach for membrane, bending and shear parts.
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Numerical examples show that the present element is free from locking and exhibits good
accuracy and stability in linear analysis of laminated composite plate and shell structures.
The remainder of this paper is outlined as follows. First, a brief review of the FSDT finite
element formulations for linear analysis is introduced in Section 2. The description of the
TIS for SQ4T element is described in Section 3. Several numerical applications are
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carried out in Section 4. Finally, some concluding remarks are made in Section 5.
2. The first-order shear deformation theory of laminated composite structures
2.1. Governing equations

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Consider a laminated composite structure with n orthotropic layers and a total thickness h
as shown in Fig.1. The kth layer is located between the line z = zk-1 and z = zk in the
thickness direction and the xy-plane is taken to be an undeformed midsurface of the
laminate. The first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) of laminated plates is an
extension of the Reissner-Mindlin theory for homogeneous isotropic thick plates (Reddy,
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2004). The flat shell kinematics is governed by the midsurface displacement u0, v0, w0
and rotation θx, θy as follows
u  x, y, z   u0  x, y   z x
v  x, y, z   v0  x, y   z y (1)
w  x, y, z   w0  x, y 
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where (u0, v0, w0) are the displacements of a point situated in the midsurface, and θx, θy
are the rotations of the transverse normal, i.e. in the z direction, about the y- and x- axes.
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Fig 1. Laminated composite structure.
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The in-plane strain vector    x  y  xy  can be rewritten
 u0, x    x, x 
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   
   v0, y   z   y , y    m  z b (2)
u0, x  v0, x   x , y   y , x 
   
and the transverse shear strain vector
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   xz  yz    x  w, x  y  w, y  (3)
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The stress resultant constitutive relationships are expressed as follows

 N   A B   m 
p          Cp p (4)
M   B D    b 
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 k 2C 0 k1k2C450   xz 
S   1 550     Cs  (5)
 k1k2C45 k22C440   yz 
T T T
with N   N x Ny N xy  , M   M x My M xy  , S  Qx Qy  are membrane
force vector, bending moment vector and transverse shear force vector; k12 , k 22 are SCFs
which can be estimated by (Vlachoutsis, 1992); A, B, D, Cs are matrices of extensional
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stiffness, bending extensional coupling stiffness, bending stiffness and transverse
shearing stiffness, respectively defined as
h/ 2
 A , B , D    1, z, z Q dz,
ij ij ij
2
ij i, j  1, 2, 6 (6)
h/ 2
h/ 2

Cij0  i, j  1, 2, 6
h/ 2
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Qij dz ,
where Qij are the elastic constants in the global x-axis and their detailed definitions can
be found in the reference (Reddy, 2004).
(7)
2.2. Standard finite element formulation of the 4-node flat element
2.2.1. Membrane part (Fig.2a)

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The approximation of in-plane x and y displacements

4
u   Ni  , ui (8a)
i 1
4
v   Ni  , vi (8b)
i 1
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a) b)
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Fig 2. a) A 4-node quadrilateral membrane element b) A 4-node quadrilateral bending element.
with Ni  ,   0.25 1  i 1  

i  denotes the shape function of element.
The discrete strain field is obtained by derivatives of the displacement

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 
 0
x   x 
    4
m    y   s um   0  u m  B m q m   B mi q mi (9)
   y  i 1
 xy    
 
 y x 
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with u m  u v  , q mi  ui vi  is the nodal displacement vector and the gradient
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matrix B mi has the following form
 Ni, x 0 
 
B mi  0 Ni, y  (10)
 Ni , y N i , x 

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2.2.2. Bending part (Fig.2b)
For the bending part of the flat element, the displacement field ub is approximated as
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ub   w  x  y    Ni qbi
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(11)
i 1
with Ni is the bilinear shape function and qbi   wi  xi  yi  is the nodal

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displacement vector of the element.

The corresponding approximation of strains is given
  x    x, x 
   
 b    y     y , y   Bb qb (12a)
     
 xy   x , y y, x 
 xz 
     B s qb (12b)
 yz 
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with
0 Ni, x 0 
 
B bi   0 0 Ni, y  (13a)
0 Ni, y N i , x 

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 Ni , x Ni 0
B si    (13b)
 Ni ,y 0 Ni 
For static analysis

Kq  F (14)
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With K is the global stiffness matrix and F is the load vector, which are given as follows
K =  BTm AB m d    (BTm BB b  BTb BB m )d    BTb DB b d    BTs C s B s d 

    (15)
 K m  K mb  K Tmb  K b  K s
F   N T pd 
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(16)

For free vibration analysis
K -  M  q = 0
2
(17)
with ω is the natural frequency and M is the global mass matrix which is defined by
1 0 0 0 0 
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M   NT mNd ,

0

0
m  h 
0

1 0
0 1
0 0
0
0
h2
0
0
0





(18)
12
 2 
0 0 0 0
h 
 12 
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and for buckling analysis
K - K  q = 0
g (19)
with λ is the critical buckling load and Kg is the geometric stiffness matrix which is
defined
K g   BTg 0 B g d  (20)

in which
   Ni, x 0 0 
 h 0 N 0 
0 0   i, y 0
   0
 0  xy0  h3 Ni , x 0 
 0   0x , 0   0 0 0 , B gi    (21)
 
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 xy  y0 

12
  0 Ni , y 0 
 0
3  0 Ni , x 
0 
h 0
0  
 12   0 0 N i , y 
3. A quadrilateral element SQ4T

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3.1. Twice interpolation strategy (TIS) for displacement fields
Let xC be a point in a four-node quadrilateral element with nodes i, j, k, m as shown in

Fig.3. We denote Si, Sj, Sk and Sm for elements that share nodes i, j, k and m. The
supporting nodes for the point xC in this quadrilateral element involve all nodes of
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elements Si, Sj, Sk and Sm.
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Fig 3. Schematic sketch of the twice interpolation strategy (TIS) for quadrilateral element in 2D.
The support domain of point xC is much larger than the standard FEM support domain,
and the trial solution at point xC can be written
nsp
u  x   N  x d N  x  d
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l l (22)
l 1
In Eq. (22), the twice-interpolation shape function N l is determined
Nl  i Nl[ i ]  ix Nl[,xi ]  iy Nl[,yi ]   j Nl[ j ]   jx Nl[,xj ]   jy Nl[,yj ]

node i node j
(23)
 k Nl[ k ]  kx Nl[,xk ]  ky Nl[,yk ]  m Nl[ m ]  mx Nl[,xm ]  my Nl[,ym ]
node k node m
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with dl denotes the nodal displacement vector, while N l[ i ] is the shape function with
respect to node i, and nsp is the total number of the supporting nodes in regard to the point
xC. The twice-interpolation shape function and derivative of twice-interpolation shape
function can be illustrated in Fig.4 for 1D, respectively.
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(a) (b)
Fig 4. Comparison of the shape functions in 1D.
The formulation of the average derivative of the shape functions at node i is given
(similar for other nodes).
Nl[,xi ] 
eSi
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  N e
[ i ][ e ]
l ,x N [i]
l ,y    N
eSi
e
[ i ][ e ]
l ,y
In Eq. (24), the term Nl[,xi ][ e ] is the derivative of N l[ i ] computed in element e, and e
 (24)
is the weight function of element e ∈ Si, which is defined

e
e  with e  Si
 e (25)
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eSi
with e being the area of the element e. In Eq. (23), the functions i , ix and iy forming
the polynomial basis associated with node i must satisfy the following conditions
i  xl   il i,x  xl   0 i,y  xl   0
ix  xl   0 ix,x  xl   il ix,y  xl   0 (26)
iy  xl   0 iy,x  xl   0 iy,y  xl   il
with l is any one of the indices i, j, k and m
1 if il
 il   (27)
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 0 if il
The above conditions have to be applied in a similar manner to other functions, i.e.,  j ,
 jx ,  jy , k , kx , ky , m , mx and my . These polynomial basis functions i ,
ix and iy for the quadrilateral element are given
i  Li  Li 2 L j  Li 2 Lk  Li 2 Lm  Li L j 2  Li Lk 2  Li Lm 2
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
ix    xi  x j  L2i L j  0.5Li L j Lk  0.5Li L j Lm 
  0.5L L L  0.5L L L 
(28)
  xi  xk  L2i Lk i k j i k m
  xi  xm   L L  0.5L L L  0.5L L L 
2
i m i m j i m k
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iy    yi  y j  L2i L j  0.5Li L j Lk  0.5Li L j Lm 
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
  yi  yk  L2i Lk  0.5Li Lk L j  0.5Li Lk Lm 
  yi  ym L L 2
i m  0.5Li Lm L j  0.5Li Lm Lk 
Other functions can be calculated in the same manner of Eq. (28) by a circulatory
permutation of indices i, j, k and m. Li, Lj, Lk and Lm are the area coordinates of the point
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xC in the quadrilateral element with four nodes i, j, k and m (see (QuocBui et al., 2014,
Wu et al., 2012, Zheng et al., 2010) for more details). These shape functions are complete
polynomials, satisfy properties of the partition of unity, and possess Kronecker’s delta
function property, respectively.
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3.2. Element stiffness matrices of the SQ4T element
By using TIS, the membrane strains at an arbitrary point xC can be obtained as follows
 m  xC   B m  x C  q m (29)
where
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qmi  ui vi  (30)
 N1,x 0 N 2 ,x 0 ... Nl,x 0 ... N nsp ,x 0 
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 
B mi  xC    0 N1,y 0 N 2 ,y ... 0 Nl,y ... 0 N nsp ,y  (31)
 
 N1,y N1,x N 2 ,y N 2 ,x ... Nl,y Nl,x ... N nsp ,y N nsp ,x 
  32 nsp
where nsp is the total number of the supporting nodes in regard to the point xC. The
membrane element stiffness matrix can be obtained as
Km   B m AB m d 
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(32)
In a similar way, the bending and shearing element stiffness matrices can be shown
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Kb   B DB d 
T
b b (33)
Ks   B C B d 
T
s s s (34)
in which the gradient matrix Bbi and Bsi have the following form
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Bbi  xC  
0 N 0 0 N 2 ,x 0 ... 0 Nl ,x 0 ... 0 N nsp ,x 0 
 1,x


 0 0 N1,y 0 0 N 2 ,y ... 0 0 Nl ,y ... 0 0 N nsp ,y 
(35)
 
0 N N1,x 0 N 2 ,y N 2 ,x ... 0 Nl ,y Nl ,x ... 0 N nsp ,y N nsp ,x 
 1,y  33nsp
B si  xC  
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 N1,x N1 0 N 2 ,x N2 0 ... Nl ,x Nl 0 ... N nsp ,x N nsp 0 
  (36)
 N1,y 0 N1 N 2 ,y 0 N 2 ... N l ,y 0 Nl ... N nsp ,y 0 N nsp 
  23nsp
Finally, the bending element stiffness matrix can be transformed as follows
K p  Kb  K s   B DB d    B C B d 
T T
b b s s s (37)
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The SQ4T flat element stiffness matrix is then rewritten as
K
K flat   Tm
K mb 

K mb K p 
where the membrane-bending coupling stiffness matrices K mb and KTmb are given by
(38)
K mb   BTm BBb d  (39)


KTmb   BTb BBm d  (40)


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4. Numerical examples
In this section, many numerical examples are presented to show the performance of the
SQ4T element in analysis of various shapes of plate/shell structures. In all examples, the
material properties are the same in all the layers. The ply angle of each layer is measured
from the global x-axis to the fibre direction. The thickness of each layer is identified. All
the units of the model are assumed to be consistent and therefore are not specified. The
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following three sets of typical graphite-epoxy material properties are used in the analysis:
• Material I: E2= 106 Pa; E1= 40106 Pa; G12 = G13 = 0.6E2; G23 = 0.5E2; ν12= ν13= ν23=
0.25; ρ= 1 kg/m3.
• Material II: E2= 106 Pa; E1= 25106 Pa; G12= G13= 0.5E2; G23= 0.2E2; ν12= ν13=ν23=
0.25; ρ= 1 kg/m3.
• Material III: E2= 106 Pa; E1= 245104 Pa; G12= G13= 0.48E2; G23= 0.2E2; ν12= ν13=ν23=
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0.23.
4.1 Static analysis
A clamped two-layer angle-ply [θo/-θo] square plate of material I with length a = 10 and
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thickness h = 0.02, subjected to a uniformly distributed transverse load qo = 1 as shown in
Fig.5a is analyzed. SCFs are: k12  k22  5 / 6 . The total thicknesses of θo and –θo layers
are equal. Table.1 and Fig.7a present a convergence study of the normalized central
deflection w*  100 E2 wh3 / (qo a 4 ) for the clamped two-layer square plate with different
fibre orientation angles. These normalized central deflections are compared with the
US
numerical solutions obtained using hybrid stress isoparametric element MQH3T (Spilker
et al., 1985), mixed element SQUAD4 (Wilt et al., 1990), refined discrete triangular
Mindlin element RDTMLC (Ge, 2002), 4-node 24-degrees of freedom displacement-
based quadrilateral element RDKQ-L24 (Zhang and Kim, 2004), mixed interpolation
smoothing quadrilateral element with 24-degrees of freedom MISQ24 (Nguyen-Van,
AN
2009) and the exact solution given by Whitney (Whitney, 1969, Whitney, 1970). It can be
seen that the results obtained by using the SQ4T element are in good agreement with the
other results.
Table 1. The normalized central deflections of a clamped 2-layer angle-ply [θo/-θo] square plate under uniform
load
Fibre MQH3T SQUAD4 RDTMLC RDKQ- MISQ24 SQ4T Exact
DM
Angle θ L24
o
5 0.1083 0.1040 0.1074 0.1049 0.1025 0.1048 0.0946
15o 0.2009 - 0.1959 0.1993 0.1977 0.1997 0.1691
25o 0.2572 0.2602 0.2508 0.2599 0.2584 0.2599 0.2355
o
35 0.2844 0.2914 0.2782 0.2907 0.2882 0.2898 0.2763
45o 0.2929 0.3013 0.2868 0.3004 0.2962 0.2991 0.2890
Furthermore, the entire plate is modelled using 1010, 1616, 2222 and 2828 meshes.
The 1010 mesh is shown in Fig.6a and the error of the normalized central deflections
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with increasing number of elements for fibre angle θ = 5o, 15o, 25o, 35o and 45o are also
shown in Fig.6b.
a) b)
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Fig 5. Geometry data for unsymmetric angle-ply square plate subjected to a) uniformly distributed transverse
loading and b) doubly sinusoidal loading.
a) b)
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b) results of convergence for θ = 5o, 15o,
Fig 6. Convergence of present method: a) mesh 100 elements and
AN 25o, 35oand 45o.
Next, we analyses simply-supported two-layer [-45o/45o] with length a and thickness h

subjected to doubly sinusoidal loading q  qo sin( x / a)sin( y / a) as shown in Fig.5b.
SCFs for the plate made of material I are assumed to be 5/6. The present numerical
results are shown in Table.2 together with some other solutions by using an accurate four-
DM
node shear flexible composite plate element CTMQ20 (Singh et al., 2000), 4-node 24-
degrees of freedom displacement-based quadrilateral element RDKQ-L24 (Zhang and
Kim, 2004), MFE element (Singh et al., 2000), mixed interpolation smoothing
quadrilateral element with 24-degrees of freedom MISQ24 (Nguyen-Van, 2009) and the
exact solution (Reddy, 2004). The error (%) of these results are also shown in Fig.7b.
Calculations are performed for the normalized central deflection w*  100 E2 wh3 / (qo a 4 ) ,
the normalized stress  x*   x h 2 / (qo a 2 ) at point (a/2, a/2, h/2), the shear stress
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 xy*   xy h2 / (qo a2 ) at point (0, 0, -h/2) and the normalized transverse shear stress
 xz*   xz h 2 / (qo a 2 ) at point (0, a/2, h/4). Once again, it can be seen that the results
obtained by the SQ4T element are in good agreement with the exact FSDT solutions for
all span-to-thickness ratios a/h from thin to thick plates.
EP
Table 2. Simply supported angle-ply [-45o/45o] square plate under doubly sinusoidal loading: Comparison of
normalized central deflection and normalized stresses.
a/h Model w*  x*  xy*  xz*
100 CTMQ20 0.6519 0.2474 0.2295 0.1194

RDKQ-L24 0.6546 0.2500 0.2316 0.1597
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MFE 0.6558 - - -
MISQ24 0.6535 0.2452 0.2298 0.1884
SQ4T 0.6567 0.2428 0.2342 0.1931
Exact FSDT 0.6564 0.2498 0.2336 0.2143
20 CTMQ20 0.6906 0.2523 0.2333 0.1773
RDKQ-L24 0.6960 0.2516 0.2316 0.2020
MFE - - - -
US
MISQ24 0.6956 0.2452 0.2298 0.1884
SQ4T 0.7090 0.2428 0.2342 0.1931
Exact FSDT 0.6981 0.2498 0.2336 0.2143
a) b)
AN
DM
Fig 7. a) Comparison study of the normalized central deflections and b) Error of the normalized central
x
deflection (w) and sigmax ( ) for the case of doubly sinusoidal loading.
4.2 Free vibration analysis
A simply supported [0o/90o/90o/0o] square laminated plate with material I is used to study
the convergence of the present method using SQ4T elements. The a/h ratio is taken to be
5. Table.3 and Fig.9a shows the comparison of the normalized fundamental frequencies
TE
of the present method with other solutions for various degrees of orthotropy of the
individual layers (E1/E2 ratio). It can be seen that the present results are in good
agreement with MLSDQ’s solutions by (Liew et al., 2003), RBF’s results of (Ferreira et
al., 2005) and MISQ24’s results of (Nguyen-Van, 2009). The first six mode shapes are
also presented in Fig.8. To deal with the effect of the ratio (a/h) on the fundamental
EP
frequency of a simply supported square cross-ply plate made of material having E1/E2=
40, Table.4 and Fig.9b presents a comparison study on the normalized fundamental
frequencies. The present numerical results are comparable with those of (Reddy and Phan,
1985) who used HSDT, (Liew, 1996) who used a p-Ritz solution, (Ferreira and Fasshauer,
2007) who used RBF-pseudospectral method, (Wu and Chen, 1994) who used local
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higher-order theory, (Matsunaga, 1991) who used global higher-order theory, (Cho et al.,
1991) who used HOIL theory, (Zhen and Wanji, 2006) who used global-local higher-
order theory and (Nguyen-Van, 2009) who used FSDT and MISQ24 elements. There is a
good agreement between the present results and other existing solutions for several ratio
values of a/h.
Table 3. Simply supported [0o/90o/90o/0o] square plate: Comparison of normalized first frequencies
US
  ( L / h)  / E2 with others (a/h = 5).
* 2
E1/E2
Model
10 20 30 40
MISQ24 8.309 9.569 10.322 10.847
MLSDQ 8.292 9.561 10.320 10.849
RBF 8.310 9.580 10.349 10.864
SQ4T
AN
8.294 9.552 10.356
  ( L / h)  / E2 with others (E1/E2 = 40).

* 2
10.846
Table 4. Simply supported [0o/90o/90o/0o] square plate: Comparison of normalized first frequencies
a/h
Model
5 10 20 25 50 100
MISQ24 10.847 15.165 17.719 18.138 18.753 18.918
DM
p-Ritz 10.855 15.143 17.658 18.071 18.673 18.836
RBF_pseudospectral 10.807 15.100 17.633 18.049 18.658 18.822
HSDT 10.989 15.268 17.666 18.049 18.462 18.756
HOIL theory 10.673 15.066 17.535 18.054 18.670 18.835
Local theory 10.682 15.069 17.636 18.055 18.670 18.835
Global theory 10.687 15.072 17.636 18.055 18.670 18.835
Global-local theory 10.729 15.165 17.803 18.240 18.902 19.156
SQ4T 10.846 15.167 17.718 18.126 18.758 18.885
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Mode 1 Mode 2
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Mode 3 Mode 4
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Mode 5 Mode 6
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Fig 8.The first six mode shapes of simply supported [0o/90o/90o/0o] square plate (E1/E2= 40, a/h = 5)
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a) b)
Fig 9. Comparison studies of the normalized fundamental frequencies with a) various E1/E2 ratio and b) various
a/h ratio.
A three-layer symmetric laminated composite square plate with a complicated cutout and
material III is considered as Fig.10. Material and geometry parameters are considered as
follows: mass density ρ = 8000 kg/m3, thickness h = 0.06m, a = 10m.
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Fig 10. Three-layer symmetric laminated composite square plate with a cutout.
The frequency is normalized by  *  (  h 2 a 4 / Do )1/ 2 with D0  E1h3 /12(1   12 21 ) . The

normalized first six frequencies and first six mode shapes of the simply supported three-
ply laminated plate for various fiber orientations are presented in Table.5 and Figs.11-12.
The present solutions are compared with the results obtained by IGA(a) based on a new
US
FSDT (Yu et al., 2016), IGA(b) and Kirchhoff theory with eight patches (Shojaee et al.,
2012), EFG and MKI methods (Bui et al., 2011). It clearly observes that the present
results are in good agreement with those published solutions for all considered
orientations.
Table 5. Simply supported [θo/-θo/θo] square plate with a complicated cutout and various value of θ: Comparison
Model
Mode
1
AN
of normalized fundamental frequencies with other solutions.
2 3
[0o/0o/0o]
4 5 6
IGA(a) 18.190 30.928 36.073 56.390 61.986 82.894

IGA(b) 18.194 30.932 35.678 55.383 62.164 81.795
EFG 18.226 31.127 36.237 56.874 62.390 83.565
DM
MKI 18.169 30.303 36.581 57.429 64.145 85.656
SQ4T 18.174 30.939 35.930 56.630 62.412 83.239
[15o/-15o/15o]
IGA(a) 19.097 32.141 36.449 57.541 63.320 84.702
IGA(b) 18.912 32.045 36.004 56.345 63.370 83.629
EFG 19.177 32.445 37.238 58.716 63.994 86.500
MKI 18.323 31.472 37.617 63.077 66.538 86.486
SQ4T 18.932 31.924 36.225 57.773 63.096 84.840
[30o/-30o/30o]
TE
IGA(a) 20.603 33.987 37.600 59.762 65.646 88.731

IGA(b) 20.316 33.933 37.074 58.484 65.895 87.973
EFG 20.926 34.915 39.101 62.222 67.054 92.715
MKI 20.310 33.987 39.898 58.111 69.699 92.099
SQ4T 20.518 33.946 37.308 59.499 65.688 89.433
[45o/-45o/45o]
IGA(a) 21.310 34.791 38.278 60.859 66.841 91.527
EP
IGA(b) 20.982 34.848 37.559 59.325 67.518 91.220

EFG 21.736 36.079 39.975 63.897 68.525 96.767
MKI 20.987 34.897 39.269 63.375 69.017 96.588
SQ4T 21.014 34.779 37.907 61.095 67.732 92.263
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Mode 1 Mode 2
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Mode 3 Mode 4
Mode 5
AN Mode 6
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Fig 11. Simply supported angle-ply [30o/-30o/30o] square plate with a complicated cutout: the first six mode
shapes.
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a) b)
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c) d)
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e) f)
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Fig 12. Comparison of the normalized first six frequencies for: a) mode 1, b) mode 2, c) mode 3, d) mode 4, e)
mode 5 and f) mode 6.
Next, the cross-ply laminated cylindrical panel with a radius R = 100, a side length L =
20 and an angle φ = 0.1 radian, subjected to simply supported boundaries is studied. The
EP
total thickness of the panel is h = 0.2. All layers have equal thickness and are made of the
same material II. The SCFs are assumed to be 5/6. The lay-up sequence, namely [0o/90o]
is considered. Considering only doubly symmetric modes, a quadrant designated as
ABCD as shown in Fig.13 is modelled.
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Fig 13. Geometry and discretization of laminated cylindrical shells.
AN
The convergence study of the normalized fundamental frequency is presented in Table.6.
The present results are also compared with other numerical solutions such as results of
(Nguyen-Van, 2009) using assumed strain smoothing method, of (Liu and To, 2003)
using layer-wise shell element, of (Jayasankar et al., 2007) using 9-node degenerated
shell element and the analytical solution by (Reddy, 1984a). It is observed that the
DM
present result give a little error than those obtained by layer-wise shell element and 9-
node degenerated shell element.
Table 6. Simply supported cross-ply cylindrical shells: Comparison study of normalized fundamental
frequencies   ( L / h)  / E2 for doubly symmetric modes.
* 2
Lay-up Model
MISQ24 LW theory Jayasankar
Reddy
(Nguyen-Van, (Liu and To, (Jayasankar et SQ4T
[0o/90o] (Reddy, 1984a)
2009) 2003) al., 2007)
16.794 17.390 17.700 16.668 17.204
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EP
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The first six mode shapes of quadrant ABCD are also presented in Fig.14.
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Mode 1 Mode 2
Mode 3
AN Mode 4
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Mode 6
Mode 5
Fig 14. Simply supported cross-ply [0o/90o/90o/0o] cylindrical panel (E1/E2= 25): the first six mode shapes for
quadrant ABCD.
4.3 Buckling analysis
A simply supported four-layer cross-ply [0o/90o/90o/0o] square laminated plate under

uniaxial compression with material I is chosen to study the convergence of the present
method using SQ4T elements. Fig.15 shows the plate geometry and boundary conditions.
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The span-to-thickness ratio of the plate a/h is taken to be 10.

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Fig 15. Cross-ply square laminated plate subjected to in-plane uniaxial compression.
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Table.7 and Fig.16a shows the convergence and comparison of the normalized critical
buckling load of the present method with other solutions for various degrees of
orthotropy of the individual layers (E1/E2 ratio). The other solutions are given by using
mixed interpolation smoothing quadrilateral element with 24-degrees of freedom
MISQ24 based on FSDT (Nguyen-Van, 2009), mesh-free radial basis function method
(Liu et al., 2007), an higher-order shear deformation theory (Reddy and Phan, 1985), an
US
other higher-order theory (Khdeir and Librescu, 1988) and the multilayered composite
plate theory (Noor, 1975). It can be seen that the present results are in good agreement
with their solutions.
Table 7. Simply supported cross-ply [0o/90o/90o/0o] square plate: Comparion of normalized critical buckling
Model
MISQ24
E1/E2
3
5.352
AN * 2
9.878
3
loads   N x a / ( E2 h ) with various E1/E2 ratios.
10 20
15.214
30
19.577
40
23.236
Liu et al. 5.401 9.985 15.374 19.537 23.154
Reddy 5.114 9.774 15.298 19.957 23.340
Khdeir 5.442 10.026 15.418 19.813 23.489
DM
Noor 5.294 9.762 15.019 19.304 22.881

SQ4T 5.404 9.890 15.248 19.592 23.401
Next, the effect of the span-to-thickness ratio (a/h) on the uniaxial critical buckling load
is studied for this plate made of material I having E1/E2= 40. The results obtained by the
SQ4T elements are shown from Table.8 and Fig.16b in comparison with those obtained
by FSDT(a) (Chakrabarti and Sheikh, 2003), FSDT(b) (Reddy and Phan, 1985), MISQ24
(Nguyen-Van, 2009) and HSDT (Reddy and Phan, 1985).
TE
Table 8. Simply supported [0o/90o/90o/0o] square plate with various a/h ratios: Comparison of normalized
* 2 3
critical buckling loads   N x a / ( E2 h ) with other solutions.
a/h
Model
10 20 50 100
MISQ24 23.236 31.747 35.561 36.190
EP
FSDT(a) 23.409 31.625 35.254 35.851

FSDT(b) 23.471 31.707 35.356 35.955
HSDT 23.349 31.637 35.419 35.971
SQ4T 23.401 31.692 35.427 35.994
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a) b)
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Fig 16. Convergence of normalized critical buckling load with a) various E1/E2 ratio and b) various a/h ratio.
Finally, the uniaxial buckling analysis of simply supported symmetric cross-ply 5-layer
AN
[0o/90o/0o/90o/0o] cylindrical shell panels of material I is considered as shown in Fig.17.
The thickness of each layer is identical and SCFs k12  k22   2 / 12 are used for this
computation. The panel is simply supported at all the edges, with aspect ratio a/b = 1 and
R/a = 20.
DM
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Fig 17.Geometry data of a cylindrical shell panel subjected to uniaxial compression.
The effect of span-to-thickness ratios on the critical buckling load is considered. Table.9
EP
reports the normalized critical buckling loads obtained by SQ4T elements for various
span-to-thickness ratios a/h together with FSDT based on smoothed element of (Nguyen-
Van, 2009), based higher order element solutions ((Kumar et al., 2003), (Prusty and
Satsangi, 2001) and the analytic FSDT solution of (Di Sciuva and Carrera, 1990). SQ4T
yield the same results and also observed that increasing ratio a/h leads to the higher
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critical buckling loads.
Table 9. Simply supported [0o/90o/0o/90o/0o] cylindrical shell panel: Comparison of the normalized critical
* 2 3
buckling loads   N x a / ( E2 h ) with other solutions.
a/h
Model
10 20 30 50 100
MISQ24 23.97 31.91 34.08 35.33 35.89
US
Kumar 23.97 31.79 - 35.40 36.85
Prusty 23.96 31.89 33.98 36.84 35.39
Sciuva 24.19 31.91 34.04 35.42 36.86
SQ4T 24.98 32.28 34.12 35.64 36.48
5. Conclusions
AN
In this paper, the novel FSDT-based quadrilateral element SQ4T has been developed and
successfully applied for linear analysis of thin-to-thick laminated composite plates and
shells. The element is based on twice interpolation strategy and it is easy to implement. In
contrast to many trends to use curved elements for shell analysis, it is shown that the
present flat four-node SQ4T formulation herein is adequately accurate in all test problems.
DM
Many numerical examples are studied and the present results remain in good agreement
with other available numerical results. It is also observed that the proposed approach is
capable of accurately predicting the static, dynamic, and buckling behaviors of both
moderately thin and thick composite plate/shell structures. In addition, the present
element maintains a sufficient rank and free from shear locking and any spurious modes.
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TE
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An Improved Four-Node Element For Analysis of Composite Plate Shell

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An Improved Four-Node Element For Analysis of Composite Plate Shell

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Accepted manuscript to appear in IJCM

Article Title: An Improved Four-Node Element for Analysis of Composite Plate/Shell

Author(s): Hoang Lan Ton-That, Hieu Nguyen-Van, Thanh Chau-Dinh

Received: 23 September 2018

Accepted: 21 February 2019

Link to final version: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219876219500208

Received (Day Month Year)

Revised (Day Month Year)

This paper deals with numerical linear analyses of laminated composite

order polynomial basis, no increase in number of the degree of freedom of the

Keywords: flat element, twice interpolation strategy (TIS), shear-locking free,

2. The first-order shear deformation theory of laminated composite structures

2.1. Governing equations

Fig 1. Laminated composite structure.

The stress resultant constitutive relationships are expressed as follows

which can be estimated by (Vlachoutsis, 1992); A, B, D, Cs are matrices of extensional

2.2. Standard finite element formulation of the 4-node flat element

2.2.1. Membrane part (Fig.2a)

The approximation of in-plane x and y displacements

Fig 2. a) A 4-node quadrilateral membrane element b) A 4-node quadrilateral bending element.

with Ni  ,   0.25 1  i 1  

The discrete strain field is obtained by derivatives of the displacement

matrix B mi has the following form

with Ni is the bilinear shape function and qbi   wi  xi  yi  is the nodal

displacement vector of the element.

For static analysis

K =  BTm AB m d    (BTm BB b  BTb BB m )d    BTb DB b d    BTs C s B s d 

For free vibration analysis

3. A quadrilateral element SQ4T

3.1. Twice interpolation strategy (TIS) for displacement fields

Let xC be a point in a four-node quadrilateral element with nodes i, j, k, m as shown in

In Eq. (22), the twice-interpolation shape function N l is determined

Nl  i Nl[ i ]  ix Nl[,xi ]  iy Nl[,yi ]   j Nl[ j ]   jx Nl[,xj ]   jy Nl[,yj ]

(similar for other nodes).

is the weight function of element e ∈ Si, which is defined

K mb   BTm BBb d  (39)

KTmb   BTb BBm d  (40)

4.1 Static analysis

Fig 6. Convergence of present method: a) mesh 100 elements and

AN 25o, 35oand 45o.

Next, we analyses simply-supported two-layer [-45o/45o] with length a and thickness h

100 CTMQ20 0.6519 0.2474 0.2295 0.1194

4.2 Free vibration analysis

  ( L / h)  / E2 with others (E1/E2 = 40).

The frequency is normalized by  *  (  h 2 a 4 / Do )1/ 2 with D0  E1h3 /12(1   12 21 ) . The

IGA(a) 18.190 30.928 36.073 56.390 61.986 82.894

IGA(a) 20.603 33.987 37.600 59.762 65.646 88.731

IGA(b) 20.982 34.848 37.559 59.325 67.518 91.220

4.3 Buckling analysis

A simply supported four-layer cross-ply [0o/90o/90o/0o] square laminated plate under

The span-to-thickness ratio of the plate a/h is taken to be 10.

Noor 5.294 9.762 15.019 19.304 22.881

FSDT(a) 23.409 31.625 35.254 35.851

Fig 17.Geometry data of a cylindrical shell panel subjected to uniaxial compression.

MISQ24 23.97 31.91 34.08 35.33 35.89

FERREIRA, A. J. M., ROQUE, C. M. C. & JORGE, R. M. N. 2005. Free vibration analysis of

Numerical Methods in Engineering, 45, 1831-1848.

Journal of Composite Materials, 3, 398-411.

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