Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581

DOI 10.1007/s00466-012-0705-y
ORIGINAL PAPER
A cell-based smoothed three-node Mindlin plate element
(CS-MIN3) for static and free vibration analyses of plates
T. Nguyen-Thoi P. Phung-Van
H. Luong-Van H. Nguyen-Van H. Nguyen-Xuan
Received: 13 August 2011 / Accepted: 23 March 2012 / Published online: 17 April 2012
Springer-Verlag 2012
Abstract The cell-based strain smoothing technique is
combined with the well-known three-node Mindlin plate ele-
ment (MIN3) to give a so-called the cell-based smoothed
MIN3 (CS-MIN3) for static and free vibration analyses of
plates. In the process of formulating the system stiffness
matrix of the CS-MIN3, each triangular element will be
divided into three sub-triangles, and in each sub-triangle, the
stabilized MIN3 is used to compute the strains and to avoid
the transverse shear locking. Then the strain smoothing tech-
nique on whole the triangular element is used to smooth the
strains on these three sub-triangles. The numerical exam-
ples demonstrated that the CS-MIN3 is free of shear locking,
passes the patch test and shows four superior properties such
as: (1) be a strong competitor to many existing three-node
triangular plate elements in the static analysis, (2) can give
high accurate solutions for problems with skew geometries
in the static analysis, (3) can give high accurate solutions in
free vibration analysis, (4) can provide accurately the values
of high frequencies of plates by using only coarse meshes.
T. Nguyen-Thoi (B) H. Nguyen-Xuan
Department of Mechanics, Faculty of Mathematics & Computer
Science, University of Science, Vietnam National University
HCM, 227 Nguyen Van Cu, Dist. 5, Hochiminh City, Vietnam
e-mail: ngttrung@hcmus.edu.vn; thoitrung76@gmail.com
T. Nguyen-Thoi P. Phung-Van H. Nguyen-Xuan
Division of Computational Mechanics, Ton Duc Thang University,
98 Ngo Tat To St., Ward 19, Binh Thanh Dist., Hochiminh City,
Vietnam
H. Luong-Van
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Hochiminh City University
of Technology (HCMUT), Hochiminh City, Vietnam
H. Nguyen-Van
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Hochiminh City University
of Architecture, Hochiminh City, Vietnam
Keywords ReissnerMindlin plate Shear locking
Finite element method (FEM) Cell-based smoothed
three-node Mindlin plate element (CS-MIN3)
Three-node Mindlin plate element (MIN3)
Strain smoothing technique
1 Introduction
In the past 50years, many of plate bending elements based
on the MindlinReissner theory using the rst-order shear
deformation (FSDT) has been proposed by researchers. Such
a large amount of elements can be found in literatures [110],
and in recent papers [1114]. In formulations of a Mindlin
Reissner plate element using the FSDT, the deection w and
rotations
x
,
y
are independent functions and required at
least to be C0-continuous. Due to the complexity of existing
plate elements, research on simpler, more efcient and inex-
pensive plate elements receives continuously strong interest.
Compared with quadrilateral elements, three-node triangular
plate elements are particularly attractive because of its sim-
plicity, easyinautomatic meshingandre-meshinginadaptive
analysis. These elements usually possess high accuracy and
fast convergence speed for displacement solutions. However
for stresses or internal forces, they usually give the lowaccu-
racy [1517] and need a post-process to improve the solution
[18, 19]. In addition, the main difculty encountered of these
elements is the phenomenon of shear locking which induces
over-stiffness as the plate becomes progressively thinner.
In order to avoid shear locking, many new numerical
techniques and effective modications have been proposed
and tested, such as the reduced integration and selective
reduced integration schemes proposed by Zienkiewicz et al.
[20] and Hughes et al. [21, 22]; the stabilization procedure
proposed by Belytschko et al. [23, 24]; free formulation
123
66 Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581
method proposed by Bergan and Wang [25], the substitute
shear strain method proposed by Hinton and Huang [26],
mixed formulation/hybrid elements [2730]; etc. However,
these elements are still subjected to some drawbacks such as
instability due to rank deciency or low accuracy or com-
plex performance. In order to overcome these drawbacks,
Hughes and Tezduzar [31] introduced an assumed natural
strain (ANS) method which allows dening the shear strains
independently from the approximation of kinematic vari-
ables. In this method, the shear strain eld of a 4-node quad-
rilateral element is interpolated independently by rational
constant shear strains along each element side, and the shear
locking problem will be overcome. It has been proved to
be mathematically valid by Bathe and Brezzi [32, 33] and
Brezzi et al. [34]. Based on this method, many success-
ful models were then presented, including the mixed inter-
polated tensorial components (MITC) family proposed by
Bathes group [3238]; the discrete ReissnerMindlin fam-
ily [39, 40] and the linked interpolation elements (Q4BL [41]
and T3BL [42]) by Zienkiewiczs group; discrete Kirchhoff
elements DKT [43] and DKQ [44] proposed by Batoz and
Lardeur; the discrete KirchhoffMindlin elements DKMQ
[45] and DKMT proposed by Katili [46]; the discrete-shear-
gap (DSG) method proposed by Bletzinger et al. [47]; etc.
Also based on the ANS method, Tessler and Hughes [48]
proposed a three-node Mindlin plate element (MIN3) in
which a complete quadratic deection eld is constrained
by continuous shear edge constraints. The MIN3 is free of
shear locking and produces convergent solutions. However,
the accuracy of the MIN3 element is still worse than those
of some others three-node plate elements [14], especially for
the thick plate.
In the other frontier of developing advanced nite element
technologies, Liu and Nguyen-Thoi et al. [49] have applied a
strain smoothing technique of meshfree methods [50] into the
conventional nite element method (FEM) using linear inter-
polations to formulate a series of smoothed FEM (S-FEM)
models named as the cell-based S-FEM (CS-FEM) [5155],
the node-based S-FEM (NS-FEM) [5660], the edge-based
S-FEM (ES-FEM) [6166] and the face-based S-FEM (FS-
FEM) [67, 68]. In these S-FEM models, the nite element
mesh is used similarly as in the FEMmodels. However, these
S-FEM models evaluate the weakform based on smoothing
domains created from the entities of the element mesh such
as cells/elements, or nodes, or edges, or faces. These smooth-
ing domains can be located inside the elements (CS-FEM)
or cover parts of adjacent elements (NS-FEM, ES-FEM and
FS-FEM). These smoothing domains are linear independent
and hence ensure stability and convergence of the S-FEM
models.
In the CS-FEM [51, 52], the number of supporting nodes
in smoothing domains are as same as those in elements, and
hence the bandwidth of stiffness matrix in the CS-FEM is
similar to that in the FEM. However, due to using the strain
smoothing technique to increase the accuracy in each ele-
ments, the computational cost in the CS-FEMis a little higher
than those of the FEM. However, in general, when the ef-
ciency of computation (computation time for the same accu-
racy) interms of the error estimator versus computational cost
is considered, the CS-FEM is still efcient than the counter-
part FEM models. The CS-FEM, however so far, has been
developed mainly only for the 4-node quadrilateral elements
[5154] and the improvement of accuracy of solutions com-
pared to those of FEM is still marginal.
This paper hence extends the CS-FEM for triangular ele-
ments and for significant improvement of solutions of plate
analysis. The cell-based strain smoothing technique in the
CS-FEM is combined with the MIN3 [48] to give a so-called
the cell-based smoothed MIN3 (CS-MIN3) for static and free
vibration analyses of plates. In the process of formulating the
system stiffness matrix of the CS-MIN3, each triangular ele-
ment will be divided into three sub-triangles, and in each sub-
triangle, the stabilized MIN3 is used to compute the strains
and to avoid the transverse shear locking. Then the strain
smoothing technique on whole the triangular element is used
to smooth the strains on these three sub-triangles.
2 Weakform for the ReissnerMindlin plate
Consider a plate under bending deformation. The middle
(neutral) surface of plate is chosen as the reference plane that
occupies a domain R
2
as shown in Fig. 1. Let wbe the
deection, and
T
=
_

x

y
_
be the vector of rotations, in
which
x
,
y
are the rotations of the middle plane around
y- and x-axis, respectively, with the positive directions
dened as shown in Fig. 1. The unknown vector of three inde-
pendent eld variables at any point in the problem domain
of the ReissnerMindlin plates can be written as
u
T
=
_
w
x

y
_
(1)
The curvature of the deected plate and the shear strains

are dened, respectively, as
= L
d
(2)

= w + (3)
where = [/x /y]
T
, and L
d
is a differential operator
matrix dened by
L
d
=

/x 0
0 /y
/y /x

(4)
The standard Galerkin weakform of the static equilibrium
equations for the ReissnerMindlin plate can now be written
as [69]:
123
Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581 67
Fig. 1 ReissnerMindlin thick plate and positive directions of the displacement w and two rotations
x
,
y
_

T
D
b
d+
_

T
D
s

d =
_

u
T
bd (5)
where b = [ p (x, y) 0 0]
T
is the distributed load applied on
the plate. The matrix D
b
is the material matrix related to the
bending deformation, and is given by
D
b
=
Et
3
12
_
1
2
_

1 0
1 0
0 0 (1 ) /2

(6)
in which E is the Youngs modulus, t is the thickness of
plate. The matrix D
s
is the material matrix related to shear
deformation, and has the form of
D
s
= kt
_
0
0
_
(7)
with the shear modulus , and the shear correction factor
k = 5/6.
For the free vibration analysis of ReissnerMindlin plates,
the standard Galerkin weakform can be derived from the
dynamic form of energy principle [69]:
_

T
D
b
d+
_

T
D
s
d+
_

u
T
m ud = 0 (8)
where m is the matrix containing the mass density of the
material and thickness t as
m =

t 0 0
0
t
3
12
0
0 0
t
3
12

(9)
3 FEM formulation for the ReissnerMindlin plate
Now, discretize the bounded domain into N
e
nite ele-
ments such that =
_
N
e
e=1

e
and
i

j
= , i = j ,
then the nite element solution u
h
=
_
w
x

y
_
T
of a dis-
placement model for the MindlinReissner plate is expressed
as:
u
h
=
N
n

I =1

N
I
(x) 0 0
0 N
I
(x) 0
0 0 N
I
(x)

d
I
(10)
where N
n
is the total number of nodes of problem domain
discretized, N
I
(x) is the shape function at node I, d
I
=
[w
I

x I

yI
]
T
is the displacement vector of the nodal degrees
of freedom (DOF) of u
h
associated to node I , respectively.
The bending and shear strains can be then expressed in
the matrix forms as:
=

I
B
I
d
I
,

s
=

I
S
I
d
I
(11)
where
B
I
=

0 N
I,x
0
0 0 N
I,y
0 N
I,y
N
I,x

, S
i
=
_
N
I,x
N
I
0
N
I,y
0 N
I
_
(12)
The discretized systemof equations of the MindlinReissner
plate using the FEM for static analysis then can be expressed
as,
Kd = F (13)
where
K =
_

B
T
D
b
B d+
_

S
T
D
s
S d (14)
is the global stiffness matrix, and the load vector
F =
_

pN d+ f
b
(15)
in which f
b
is the remaining part of F subjected to prescribed
boundary loads.
For free vibration analysis, we have
(K
2
M)d = 0 (16)
where is the natural frequency and M is the global mass
matrix dened by
M =
_

N
T
mN
T
d (17)
123
68 Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581
Fig. 2 Three-node triangular element
4 CS-MIN3 formulation for the ReissnerMindlin plate
In this section, the cell-based strain smoothing technique
[51] is combined with the MIN3 [48] to give a so-called the
CS-MIN3 for static and free vibration analyses of plates.
4.1 Brief on the MIN3 formulation [48]
In the MIN3 [48], the rotations are assumed to be linear
through the rotational DOFs at three nodes of the elements,
and the deection is initial assumed to be quadratic through
the deection DOFs at six nodes (three node of the elements
and three mid-edge points). Then, by enforcing continuous
shear constraints at every element edge, the deection DOFs
at three mid-edge points can be removed and the deection
is now approximated only by vertex DOFs at three nodes of
the elements. The MIN3 element hence can overcome shear-
locking-free and produces convergent solutions [48]. In this
paper, we just brief on the MIN3 formulation which is nec-
essary for the formulation of the CS-MIN3.
Using a mesh of three-node triangular elements as shown
in Fig. 2, two rotations
x
and
y
at the element level are
assumed to be linear as

x
=
3

I =1
N
I
(x)
x I
= N
x
;
y
=
3

I =1
N
I
(x)
yI
= N
y
(18)
and the initial deection w is assumed to be quadratic as
w =
6

I =1
R
I
w
I
= Rw
ini
(19)
where N = [N
1
(x) N
2
(x) N
3
(x)] with N
I
(x), I = 1, 2, 3,
are the linear shape functions at node I ;
T
x
= [
x1

x2

x3
]
and
T
y
=
_

y1

y2

y3
_
are the rotational DOFs at three
nodes of the element; w
T
ini
= [w
1
w
2
w
3
w
4
w
5
w
6
] is the
deection DOFs at six nodes (three nodes of the elements
and three mid-edge points as shown in Table 1), and R is the
row vector of quadratic shape functions given by
R = [N
1
(2N
1
1) N
2
(2N
2
1) N
3
(2N
3
1)
4N
1
N
2
4N
2
N
3
4N
3
N
1
]
(20)
Now, in order to condense out the mid-edge deection
DOFs, w
4
, w
5
, w
6
in w, the continuous shear constraints at
every element edge were enforced by the following differen-
tial relation
_
w
,s
+
n
_
,s

edges
= 0 (21)
where s denotes the edge coordinate and
n
is the tangen-
tial edge rotation as shown in Fig. 2. The enforcement of
constraints (21) at three element edges yields
w
4
=
1
2
(w
1
+ w
2
)
+
1
8
_
b
3
(
x1

x2
) +a
3
_

y2

y1
__
w
5
=
1
2
(w
2
+w
3
)
+
1
8
_
b
1
(
x2

x3
) +a
1
_

y3

y2
__
w
6
=
1
2
(w
3
+ w
1
)
+
1
8
_
b
2
(
x3

x1
) +a
2
_

y1

y3
__
(22)
Table 1 Nodal congurations
for initial (unconstrained) and
constrained displacement eld
in the MIN3
Shape functions Initial nodal
conguration
Continuous shear edge constraints:
_
w
,s
+
n
_
,s

edges
= 0
Constrained nodal
conguration
w
x
,
y
Quadratic Linear Three edge constraints
123
Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581 69
Fig. 3 Three-node triangular element coordinate description in the
MIN3 element
where a
1
= x
3
x
2
, a
2
= x
1
x
3
, a
3
= x
2
x
1
, b
1
=
y
2
y
3
, b
2
= y
3
y
1
, b
3
= y
1
y
2
as shown in Fig. 3.
Substituting Eq. (22) into Eq. (19), the deection, w, is
nowapproximated only by vertex DOFs at three nodes of the
elements as
w =
3

I =1
N
I
w
I
+
3

I =1
H
I

x I
+
3

I =1
L
I

yI
= Nw +L
x
+H
y
(23)
where w
T
=[w
1
w
2
w
3
] , H=[H
1
H
2
H
3
] , L = [L
1
L
2
L
3
]
are the vectors of shape functions, with H
I
and L
I
, I =
1, 2, 3, given by
H
1
=
1
2
(a
2
N
3
N
1
a
3
N
1
N
2
) ;
H
2
=
1
2
(a
3
N
1
N
2
a
1
N
2
N
3
) ;
H
3
=
1
2
(a
1
N
2
N
3
a
2
N
3
N
1
) (24)
L
1
=
1
2
(b
3
N
1
N
2
b
2
N
3
N
1
) ;
L
2
=
1
2
(b
1
N
2
N
3
b
3
N
1
N
2
) ;
L
3
=
1
2
(b
2
N
3
N
1
b
1
N
2
N
3
) (25)
The element stiffness matrix, K
MIN3
e
, is now given by
K
MIN3
e
=
_

e
B
T
D
b
Bd+
_

e
S
T
D
s
Sd (26)
where
B =

0 0 N
,x
0 N
,y
0
0 N
,x
N
,y

(27)
S =
_
N
,x
L
,x
+ N H
,x
N
,y
L
,y
H
,y
+N
_
(28)
It was suggested [70] that a stabilization term needs to be
added to further improve the accuracy of approximate solu-
tions and to stabilize shear force oscillations. Such a modi-
cation is achieved by simply replacing D
s
in Eq. (26) by

D
s
,
as follows.
K
MIN3
e
=
_

e
B
T
D
b
Bd+
_

e
S
T

D
s
Sd (29)
where

D
s
=
kt
3
t
2
+h
2
e
_
1 0
0 1
_
(30)
in which h
e
is the longest length of the edges of the element
and is a positive constant [71]. In this paper, the stabilized
parameter is xed at 0.1 for both static and free vibration
analyses.
4.2 Formulation of CS-MIN3
In the CS-MIN3, each triangular element is divided into three
sub-triangles by connecting the central point of the element
to three eld nodes, and the displacement vector at the cen-
tral point is assumed to be the average of three displace-
ment vectors of eld nodes. In each sub-triangles, MIN3 is
used to compute the strains, and then the strain smoothing
technique on whole triangular element is used to smooth
the strains on these three sub-triangles. Hence, the contin-
uous shear constraints in CS-MIN3 will be satised at three
element edges, and also at three interior lines connecting
the central point with three eld nodes. The CS-MIN3 is
hence softer than MIN3, and shows many superior proper-
ties compared to than the MIN3 and other triangular plate
elements.
Consider a typical triangular element
e
as shown in
Fig. 4. We now divide the element into three sub-trian-
gles
1
,
2
and
3
by connecting the central point O
with three eld nodes as shown in Fig. 4. The coordi-
nates x
O
= [x
O
y
O
]
T
of the central point O are calculated
by
x
O
=
1
3
(x
1
+ x
2
+ x
3
) ; y
O
=
1
3
(y
1
+ y
2
+ y
3
) (31)
where x
i
= [x
i
y
i
]
T
, i = 1, 2, 3, are coordinates of three
eld nodes, respectively.
123
70 Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581
sub-triangle

1
2
3
central point
O
1

2
Fig. 4 Three sub-triangles (
1
,
2
and
3
) created from the triangle
1-2-3 in the CS-MIN3 by connecting the central point Owith three eld
nodes 1, 2 and 3
In the CS-MIN3, we assume that the displacement vec-
tor d
eO
at the central point O is the simple average of three
displacement vectors d
e1
, d
e2
and d
e3
of three eld nodes
d
eO
=
1
3
(d
e1
+ d
e2
+d
e3
) (32)
On the rst sub-triangle
1
(triangle O-1-2), we now con-
struct linear approximation u

1
e
by
u

1
e
= N

1
1
(x)d
eO
+ N

1
2
(x)d
e1
+ N

1
3
(x)d
e2
= N

1
d

1
(33)
where d

1
= [d
eO
d
e1
d
e2
]
T
is the vector of nodal DOF of
the sub-triangle
1
and N

1
=
_
N

1
1
N

1
2
N

1
3
_
is the vec-
tor containing the linear shape functions at nodes O, 1, 2 of
the sub-triangle
1
.
The curvatures of the deection

1
and the altered shear
strains

1
in the sub-triangle
1
are then obtained by

1
=
_
b

1
1
b

1
2
b

1
3
_
. , .
b

d
eO
d
e1
d
e2

= b

1
d

1
(34)

1
=
_
s

1
1
s

1
2
s

1
3
_
. , .
s

d
eO
d
e1
d
e2

= s

1
d

1
(35)
where b

1
and s

1
are, respectively, computed similarly as
the matrices B and S of the MIN3 in Eqs. (27) and (28)
but with one adjustment: the coordinates of three node x
i
=
[x
i
y
i
]
T
, i = 1, 2, 3 are replaced by x
O
, x
1
and x
2
, respec-
tively.
Substituting d
eO
in Eq. (32) into Eqs. (34) and (35), and
then rearranging we obtain

1
=
_
1
3
b

1
1
+b

1
2
1
3
b

1
1
+ b

1
3
1
3
b

1
1
_
. , .
B

d
e1
d
e2
d
e3

=B

1
d
e
(36)

1
=
_
1
3
s

1
1
+s

1
2
1
3
s

1
1
+s

1
3
1
3
s

1
1
_
. , .
S

d
e1
d
e2
d
e3

=S

1
d
e
(37)
Similarly, for the second sub-triangle
2
(triangle O-2-3)
and third sub-triangle
3
(triangle O-3-1), the curvatures of
the deection

j
, the altered shear strains

j
and matrices
B

j
, S

j
, j = 2, 3, respectively, can be obtained by cyclic
permutation.
Now, applying the cell-based strain smoothing operation
in the CS-FEM [51, 52], the bending strains

1
,

2
,

3
and shear strains

1
,

2
,

3
are, respectively, used to
create a smoothed bending strain

e
and a smoothed shear
strain

e
on the element
e
, such as:

e
=
_

e
(x) d =

1
_

e
(x) d
+

2
_

e
(x) d+

3
_

e
(x) d (38)

e
=
_

e
(x) d =

1
_

e
(x) d
+

2
_

e
(x) d +

3
_

e
(x) d (39)
where
e
(x) is a given smoothing function that satises at
least unity property
_

e

e
(x) d = 1. Using the follow-
ing constant smoothing function
e
(x) =
_
1/A
e
x
e
0 x /
e
,
where A
e
is the area of the triangular element, the smoothed
bending strain
e
and the smoothed shear strain
e
in Eqs.
(38) and (39) become

e
=
A

1
+ A

2
+ A

3
A
e
;

e
=
A

1
+ A

2
+ A

3
A
e
(40)
where A

1
, A

2
and A

3
are the areas of the sub-triangles

2
,
2
, and
3
, respectively.
Substituting

j
and

j
, j = 1, 2, 3, into Eq. (40), the
smoothed bending strain
e
and the smoothed shear strain
e
are expressed by

e
=

Bd
e
;

e
=

Sd
e
(41)
where

Bis the smoothed bending strain gradient matrix given
by
123
Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581 71
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 5 Square plate models and their discretizations using triangular elements, a clamped plate, b simply supported plate, c four discretizations of
a quarter of plate using triangular elements

B =
A

1
B

1
+ A

2
B

2
+ A

3
B

3
A
e
(42)
and

S is the smoothed shear strain gradient matrix given by

S =
A

1
S

1
+ A

2
S

2
+ A

3
S

3
A
e
(43)
Therefore the global stiffness matrix of the CS-MIN3 are
assembled by

K =
N
e

e=1

K
e
(44)
where

K
e
is the smoothed element stiffness given by

K
e
=
_

B
T
D
b

B d+
_

S
T

D
s

Sd =

B
T
D
b

BA
e
+

S
T

D
s

SA
e
(45)
Note that the rank of the CS-MIN3 element is similar to
that of the MIN3 element and hence the temporal stability
of the CS-MIN3 element is ensured. Only three eigenvalues
are always zero (corresponding to the rigid body modes of
the element) for various element shapes of very thin and
thick plates, and the CS-MIN3 element has no spurious zero-
energy modes as shown in various numerical examples in
Sect. 5.
Also note that the introduction of the central points in the
triangular elements in the CS-MIN3 is only for the inter-
mediate formulation of the element stiffness matrix. In the
nal form of element stiffness matrix as shown in Eq. (45),
the nodal displacement vectors of the central points will be
replaced by those of three vertex nodes. Hence no extra DOF
are associated with these central points. This means that the
nodal unknowns in the CS-MIN3 are the same as those in the
MIN3 of the same mesh.
5 Numerical results
In this section, various numerical examples are performed to
show the accuracy and stability of the proposed CS-MIN3
compared to the analysis solutions. For comparison, several
other elements such as DSG3 [47], ES-DSG3 [14], MIN3
[48] and MITC4 [35] have also been implemented in our
package.
5.1 Static analysis
The patch test is performed and CS-MIN3 element passes
the patch test within machine precision.
5.1.1 Square plate
Figure 5a and b describe the models of a square plate (length
L, thickness t ) with clamped (w =
n
=
s
= 0) and simply
supported (w =
s
= 0) boundary conditions subjected to a
uniform load q = 1, respectively. The material parameters
are given by Youngs modulus E = 1.092.000 and Poissons
ratio = 0.3. Five uniform discretizations N N of plate
with N=4, 8, 10, 12 and 16 are used and a quarter of these dis-
cretizations are plotted in Fig. 5c. The detailed expressions
of analytical solutions can be found by Taylor and Auricchio
[42].
First, a shear locking test using a coarse mesh (mesh
12 12) for the clamped plate is performed and the cen-
tral deection and central moment are shown in Fig. 6.
The results show that similarly to DSG3, MIN3, ES-DSG3
123
72 Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581
(a) (b)
Fig. 6 Results of various methods in the shear locking test of the clamped square plate subjected to uniform load with mesh 12 12, a central
deection, b central moment
(a) (b)
Fig. 7 Convergence of results of clamped square plate with t /L = 0.001, a central deection, b central moment
(b) (a)
Fig. 8 Convergence of results of clamped square plate with t /L = 0.1, a central deection, b central moment
123
Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581 73
Fig. 9 Comparison of the computational time of clamped square plate
with t /L = 0.1
and MITC4, the CS-MIN3 also provides a locking-free
solution when the plate thickness becomes progressively
small.
For the clamped plate, the convergence of the central
deection and the central moment against the different mesh
densities N N for the thin plate (ratio t /L = 0.001)
and thick plate (ratio t /L = 0.1) are plotted in Figs. 7
and 8, respectively. It is seen that with the same DOF,
the CS-MIN3 is worse than the MITC4 but better than
the DSG3 and MIN3 for both thin and thick plates. Com-
pared to the ES-DSG3, the CS-MIN3 usually gives better
results for thin plates, but a little worse results for thick
plates.
Figure 9 compares the computational time of methods
for the clamped plate with t /L = 0.1. It is seen that with
the same set of nodes, the CS-MIN3 takes a longer time to
solve than the MIN3 and MITC4, but a little better than the
ES-DSG3.
For the simply supported plate (w =
s
= 0), the con-
vergence of the central deection and the central moment
against the different mesh densities N N for the thin plate
(ratio t /L = 0.001) and thick plate (ratio t /L = 0.1) are
plotted in Figs. 10 and 11. It is again conrmed the obtained
comments as in the above clamped plate.
(a) (b)
Fig. 10 Convergence of results of simply supported square plate (w =
s
= 0) with t /L = 0.001, a central deection, b central moment
(b) (a)
Fig. 11 Convergence of results of simply supported square plate (w =
s
= 0) with t /L = 0.1, a central deection, b central moment
123
74 Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581
(b) (a)
Fig. 12 a A simply supported (w = 0) skew Morleys model, b four discretizations of a quarter of plate using triangular elements
Fig. 13 Convergence of deection at the central point of Morley plate
(with L/t = 1,000) by various methods
5.1.2 Skew plate
We now consider a rhombic plate with simply supported
(w = 0) boundary conditions subjected to a uniform load
q = 1 as shown in Fig. 12a. This plate was originally stud-
ied by Morley [72]. Geometry and material parameters are
given by length L = 100, thickness t = 0.1, Youngs mod-
ulus E = 10.92 and Poissons ratio = 0.3. Five uniform
discretizations N N of plate with N = 4, 8, 10, 12 and
16 are used and a quarter of these discretizations are plotted
in Fig. 12b.
The convergence of the deection and principal moments
at the central point by various methods are plotted in Figs. 13
and 14. It is seen that the CS-MIN3 shows remarkably excel-
lent performance compared to the DSG3, MIN3 and even
MITC4, and is a good competitor to the ES-DSG3. These
results hence imply that for problems with skew geometries,
the CS-MIN3 can give high accurate solutions and is a strong
competitor to many existing plate elements.
5.2 Free vibration analysis of plates
In this section, we investigate the accuracy and efciency of
the CS-MIN3 element for analyzing natural frequencies of
plates. The plate may have free (F), simply (S) supported or
clamped (C) edges. The symbol, CFSF, for instance, repre-
sents clamped, free, supported and free boundary conditions
along the edges of rectangular plate. A non-dimensional fre-
quency parameter is often used to stand for the frequencies
and the obtained results use the regular meshes. The results of
the CS-MIN3 are then compared to analytical solutions and
other numerical results which are available in the literature.
(a) (b)
Fig. 14 Convergence of results of at the central point of Morley plate (with L/t = 1, 000), a max principal moment, b min principal moment
123
Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581 75
Fig. 15 Affection of the lumped mass matrix and consistent mass
matrix to the rst frequency of the CS-MIN3
Also note that, in dynamic analysis using the CS-MIN3,
we can use the usual consistent mass matrix dened in Eq.
(17) to compute. However, in this paper for computational
efciency [69], the well-known lumped mass matrix is used.
The reason is that the lumped mass matrix is usually softer
than the consistent mass matrix. For the displacement-based
plate elements, the stiffness matrix K is usually stiffer than
the real stiffness matrix. Using the lumped mass matrix
instead of consistent mass matrix in the displacement-based
plate elements will hence soften the over-stiffness of the sys-
temandwill helptogive muchmore accurate eigenfrequency
prediction.
5.2.1 Square plate
We now consider square plates of length L and thick-
ness t . The material parameters are Youngs modulus E =
2.0 10
11
, Poissons ratio = 0.3 and the density mass
= 8, 000. A non-dimensional frequency parameter =
(
2
a
4
t /D)
1/4
is used, where D = Et
3
/(12(1
2
)) is the
exural rigidity of the plate.
First, we analyze two thin and thick SSSS plates corre-
sponding to thickness-to-length t /L = 0.005 and t /L =
0.1. The geometry of the plate is shown in Fig. 5b, and four
uniform discretizations N N of plate with N = 4, 8, 16,
and 24 are used and a quarter of these discretizations are
plotted in Fig. 5c.
Figure 15 shows the affection of using of the lumped mass
matrix and the consistent mass matrix by Eq. (17) to the
rst frequency of the CS-MIN3. It is seen that the results of
Table 2 Convergence of six
lowest non-dimensional
frequency parameters of a
SSSS thin square plate
(t /L = 0.005)
Meshing Methods Mode sequence number
1 2 3 4 5 6
4 4 DSG3 5.5626 8.8148 11.8281 13.4126 18.1948 19.2897
MIN3 5.0409 8.6812 10.0678 12.9804 17.2128 18.9643
ES-DSG3 4.9168 8.1996 9.4593 11.5035 14.2016 15.0164
MITC4 4.6009 8.0734 8.0734 10.305 15.0109 15.0109
CS-MIN3 4.4965 7.1241 7.2503 9.0931 10.0933 10.1619
8 8 DSG3 4.7327 7.4926 8.2237 10.2755 11.6968 12.4915
MIN3 4.5804 7.4049 7.6488 9.9064 11.2774 11.4598
ES-DSG3 4.5376 7.2981 7.4659 9.6486 10.8937 11.028
MITC4 4.4812 7.2519 7.2519 9.2004 10.7796 10.7796
CS-MIN3 4.4543 7.0536 7.0791 8.975 10.0418 10.0477
16 16 DSG3 4.5131 7.1502 7.3169 9.3628 10.3772 10.4461
MIN3 4.4759 7.1174 7.1704 9.1459 10.2473 10.257
ES-DSG3 4.4641 7.087 7.1193 9.0582 10.1444 10.1489
MITC4 4.4522 7.0792 7.0792 8.9611 10.1285 10.1285
CS-MIN3 4.4453 7.031 7.0367 8.9051 9.959 9.9592
24 24 DSG3 4.4718 7.0796 7.1459 9.1026 10.1256 10.1371
MIN3 4.4572 7.0653 7.0879 8.9998 10.0706 10.0724
ES-DSG3 4.4519 7.0511 7.0648 8.9583 10.0231 10.0238
MITC4 4.4458 7.0440 7.0440 8.9094 10.0059 10.0059
CS-MIN3 4.4438 7.0270 7.0295 8.8931 9.94400 9.94400
Exact [73] 4.443 7.025 7.025 8.886 9.935 9.935
123
76 Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581
Table 3 Convergence of six
lowest non-dimensional
frequency parameters of a
SSSS thick square plate
(t /L = 0.1)
Meshing Methods Mode sequence number
1 2 3 4 5 6
4 4 DSG3 4.997 8.149 9.4311 11.354 14.129 14.9353
MIN3 4.9129 8.4029 9.3892 12.1445 15.608 16.9309
ES-DSG3 4.7376 7.658 8.4524 10.1882 12.1227 12.7533
MITC4 4.5146 7.6192 7.6192 9.4471 12.2574 12.2574
CS-MIN3 4.4032 6.7790 6.8435 8.3901 9.0714 9.0889
8 8 DSG3 4.4891 7.0697 7.253 9.1263 10.2195 10.3361
MIN3 4.5114 7.2165 7.3557 9.3924 10.6582 10.7313
ES-DSG3 4.4433 6.9495 7.0727 8.8487 9.8575 9.9221
MITC4 4.4025 6.9402 6.9402 8.6082 9.8582 9.8582
CS-MIN3 4.3743 6.7560 6.7712 8.3830 9.2329 9.2341
16 16 DSG3 4.3943 6.8227 6.8587 8.5447 9.4557 9.4616
MIN3 4.4297 6.9612 6.9892 8.7917 9.8071 9.8107
ES-DSG3 4.3846 6.7922 6.8196 8.4744 9.3666 9.3698
MITC4 4.3753 6.7918 6.7918 8.4166 9.3728 9.3728
CS-MIN3 4.3683 6.7470 6.7511 8.3623 9.2256 9.2257
24 24 DSG3 4.3785 6.7788 6.7940 8.4383 9.3243 9.3254
MIN3 4.4157 6.9163 6.9282 8.6873 9.6642 9.6648
ES-DSG3 4.3744 6.7651 6.7770 8.4072 9.2845 9.2851
MITC4 4.3694 6.7618 6.7618 8.3757 9.2800 9.2800
CS-MIN3 4.3672 6.7454 6.7472 8.3580 9.2235 9.2235
Exact [73] 4.37 6.74 6.74 8.35 9.22 9.22
(a) (b)
Fig. 16 Six lowest frequencies of SSSS square plates discretized by a uniform mesh 4 4, a thin plate (t /L = 0.005), b thick plate (t /L = 0.1)
the CS-MIN3 using the lumped mass matrix are much more
accurate than those of the CS-MIN3 using the consistent
mass matrix, and even better than those of the MITC4 (using
the consistent mass matrix). In this paper, we hence use the
lumped mass matrix for the CS-MIN3 in all free vibration
analyses with the aim of increasing the accuracy of solutions
and computational efciency.
Tables 2 and 3 give the convergence of six lowest frequen-
cies of thin plate (t /L = 0.005) and thick plate (t /L = 0.1),
respectively. In addition, Figs. 16 and 17 plot the values of
six lowest frequencies of thin plate (t /L = 0.005) and thick
plate (t /L = 0.1) for two uniformmeshes 44 and 2424,
respectively. It is observed that the results of CS-MIN3 agree
excellently with the analytical results [73] and are much more
accurate than those of the others elements for both thin and
thick plates, and for both coarse and ne meshes. In particu-
lar, the CS-MIN3 can provide accurately the values of high
frequencies of plates by using only coarse meshes.
123
Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581 77
(a) (b)
Fig. 17 Six normalized lowest frequencies (
h
/
exact
) of SSSS square plates discretized by a uniform mesh 24 24, a thin plate (t /L = 0.005),
b thick plate (t /L = 0.1)
Table 4 Convergence of six lowest non-dimensional frequency param-
eters of a CCCC thin square plate (t /L = 0.005)
Meshing Methods Mode sequence number
1 2 3 4 5 6
4 4 DSG3 8.4197 12.772 14.9652 17.2579 21.389 21.76
MIN3 7.4097 11.7631 13.4014 16.3547 20.979 21.9197
ES-DSG3 6.9741 10.1934 11.4756 13.0548 15.4035 15.936
MITC4 6.5638 11.5231 11.5231 13.9505 62.6046 62.6054
CS-MIN3 6.1712 8.6783 8.9731 10.3804 11.0673 11.2107
8 8 DSG3 6.7161 9.7867 10.5673 12.9981 14.5306 15.3143
MIN3 6.346 9.3326 9.6896 12.1067 13.632 13.8879
ES-DSG3 6.1982 9.0117 9.2894 11.5616 12.795 13.0357
MITC4 6.1235 9.0602 9.0602 11.0186 12.9981 13.0263
CS-MIN3 6.0475 8.6471 8.7198 10.5863 11.701 11.7459
16 16 DSG3 6.1786 8.8759 9.068 11.2452 12.2182 12.2992
MIN3 6.0818 8.7504 8.8301 10.8435 11.9680 12.0010
ES-DSG3 6.0355 8.6535 8.7081 10.6584 11.743 11.772
MITC4 6.0285 8.6801 8.6801 10.5443 11.7989 11.8266
CS-MIN3 6.0101 8.5862 8.603 10.4502 11.5285 11.5556
24 24 DSG3 6.0728 8.6965 8.7757 10.7808 11.7863 11.8148
MIN3 6.0346 8.6464 8.6806 10.5952 11.6856 11.7114
ES-DSG3 6.0126 8.5999 8.623 10.5029 11.5795 11.6056
MITC4 6.0057 8.6013 8.6013 10.4389 11.5797 11.6077
CS-MIN3 6.0033 8.5742 8.5816 10.4215 11.4936 11.5205
Exact [73] 5.999 8.568 8.568 10.407 11.472 11.498
Next, we analyze two thin and thick CCCC square plates
shown in Fig. 5a. Four uniform meshes and two ratios of
thickness-to-length t /L are similar to those of the SSSS plate
case. Tables 4 and 5 give the convergence of six lowest fre-
quencies of thin plate (t /L = 0.005) and thick plate (t /L =
0.1), respectively. In addition, Figs. 18 and 19 plot the val-
ues of six lowest frequencies of thin plate (t /L = 0.005)
and thick plate (t /L = 0.1) for two uniform meshes 44
and 2424, respectively. Again it is seen that the obtained
Table 5 Convergence of six lowest non-dimensional frequency param-
eters of a CCCC thick square plate (t /L = 0.1)
Meshing Methods Mode sequence number
1 2 3 4 5 6
4 4 DSG3 6.8748 9.8938 11.0847 12.6362 15.1032 15.6402
MIN3 6.9924 10.7891 12.0792 14.5388 18.102 19.132
ES-DSG3 6.2662 8.7952 9.6625 10.9112 12.6101 13.136
MITC4 6.1612 9.5753 9.5753 11.2543 14.0894 14.1377
CS-MIN3 5.8163 7.8647 8.0481 9.2126 9.6233 9.7156
8 8 DSG3 5.9547 8.3618 8.6293 10.2985 11.3415 11.5397
MIN3 6.114 8.8097 9.0456 11.0107 12.3554 12.5117
ES-DSG3 5.8068 8.0861 8.2701 9.8397 10.76 10.896
MITC4 5.8079 8.2257 8.2257 9.731 10.9921 11.0457
CS-MIN3 5.7180 7.8901 7.9111 9.3563 10.1380 10.1875
16 16 DSG3 5.7616 7.9935 8.0525 9.5772 10.4153 10.4697
MIN3 5.9281 8.3778 8.4288 10.1422 11.1503 11.193
ES-DSG3 5.725 7.9211 7.9627 9.4499 10.2631 10.3126
MITC4 5.7288 7.9601 7.9601 9.423 10.3257 10.3752
CS-MIN3 5.7117 7.8846 7.8965 9.3442 10.1319 10.1803
24 24 DSG3 5.7288 7.9282 7.9537 9.4376 10.251 10.2992
MIN3 5.8963 8.3026 8.3246 9.9873 10.947 10.9855
ES-DSG3 5.7123 7.8952 7.9133 9.379 10.1815 10.2289
MITC4 5.7104 7.9048 7.9048 9.3559 10.1957 10.2446
CS-MIN3 5.707 7.8803 7.8856 9.334 10.1263 10.1744
Exact [73] 5.71 7.88 7.88 9.33 10.13 10.18
comments in the SSSS plates are conrmed for the CCCC
plates.
5.2.2 Skew plate
We now consider the thin (t /L = 0.001) and thick (t /L =
0.2) cantilever rhombic (CFFF) plates. The geometry of the
plate is illustrated in Fig. 20a with skew angle = 60

. The
123
78 Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581
(a) (b)
Fig. 18 Six lowest frequencies of CCCC square plates discretized by mesh 4 4, a thin plate (t /L = 0.005), b thick plate (t /L = 0.1)
(a) (b)
Fig. 19 Six normalized lowest frequencies (
h
/
exact
) of CCCC square plates discretized by uniform mesh 24 24, a thin plate (t /L = 0.005),
b thick plate (t /L = 0.1)
(a) (b)
Fig. 20 a A parallelogram rhombic plate with boundary condition CFFF, b four discretizations of a quarter of plate using triangular elements
material parameters are Youngs modulus E = 2.0 10
11
,
Poissons ratio = 0.3 and the density mass = 8, 000. A
non-dimensional frequency parameter is used. Four uni-
form discretizations N N of plate with N = 4, 8, 16 and
24 are used and a quarter of these discretizations are plotted
in Fig. 20b. Figures 21 and 22 plot the values of six low-
est frequencies of thin plate (t /L = 0.001) and thick plate
(t /L = 0.2) for two uniform meshes 4 4 and 24 24,
respectively. Again, it is conrmed that the results of CS-
MIN3 agree excellently with those of the semi-analytical pb-
2 Ritz method [74], and are much more accurate than those
DSG3, MIN3 and MITC4 for both coarse and ne meshes,
and is a good competitor of the ES-DSG3. In particular, the
CS-MIN3 can provide accurately the values of high frequen-
cies of plates by using only coarse meshes.
6 Conclusions
The cell-based strain smoothing technique is combined with
the well-known MIN3 to give a so-called the CS-MIN3
for static and free vibration analyses of plates. Through
123
Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581 79
(a) (b)
Fig. 21 Six lowest frequencies of CFFF rhombic square plates discretized by mesh 4 4, a thin plate (t /L = 0.001), b thick plate (t /L = 0.2)
(a) (b)
Fig. 22 Six normalized lowest frequencies (
h
/
exact
) of CFFF rhombic square plates discretized by mesh 24 24, a thin plate (t /L = 0.001),
b thick plate (t /L = 0.2)
the formulations and numerical examples, some concluding
remarks can be drawn as follows:
The CS-MIN3 uses only three DOFs at each vertex node
without additional DOF. The CS-MIN3 is free of shear
locking and passes the patch test.
The CS-MIN3 only use the triangular elements which is
a clear advantage compared to using four-node quadri-
lateral elements of MITC4. This advantage will be seen
clearer when the geometry domain of plate is skew or
complicated.
For static analysis, the results of the CS-MIN3 agree well
with analytical solutions and results of several other pub-
lished elements in the literature. The CS-MIN3 is much
more accurate than DSG3, MIN3 and is a good competi-
tor to ES-DSG3, MITC4 for some cases.
For free vibration analysis, the CS-MIN3 is stable tem-
porally, agrees well with analytical solutions and shows
some superior properties. The CS-MIN3gives more accu-
rate results than the DSG3, MIN3, MITC4 and ES-DSG3
and shows to be a strong competitor to existing compli-
cated quadrilateral plate elements such as the Rayleigh
Ritz method, the pb-2 Ritz method. In particular, the
CS-MIN3 can provide accurately the values of high fre-
quencies of plates by using only coarse meshes.
For the problems with skew geometries, the CS-MIN3
shows to be a strong competitor to others methods.
Note that, the performance of CS-MIN3 is also simple
and only based on elements, the CS-MIN3 hence can be
extended to geometrical nonlinear problems easily by adding
to a non-linear membrane strain and using the total Lagrang-
ian approach and arc-length technique as performed in the
[53]. Furthermore, CS-MIN3 can be extended easily to the
at shell element in which each node will have 6 DOF, and
a transformation matrix of coordinates needs to be used to
transformthe global coordinate systemtothe local coordinate
systemas performed in [75]. This extension hence highlights
123
80 Comput Mech (2013) 51:6581
the advantage of CS-MIN3 which uses only triangular ele-
ments, because the geometry of shell structures is often much
more complicated than that of plate structures. In addition,
the extension of CS-MIN3 for the implementation of mate-
rial nonlinear behaviour in plate problems will be veried in
coming time.
Acknowledgments This work was supported by Vietnam National
Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED),
Ministry of Science and Technology, under the basic research program
(Project no.: 107.02.2010.01).
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