Free-vibration and buckling of Mindlin plates using SGN-FEM models and effects of parasitic shear in models performance

Free-vibration and buckling analyses of plate problems are investigated with the aid of the strain gradient notation finite element method (SGN-FEM). As SGN-FEM employs physically interpretable polynomials in developing finite elements, parasitic shear sources, which are the cause of shear locking, can be precisely identified and subsequently eliminated. This allows two mutually complementary objectives to be defined in this work, namely, evaluate the efficiency of free-vibration and buckling results provided by corrected models, and study the severity of parasitic shear effects on plate models performance. Parasitic shear are flexural terms erroneously present in shear strain polynomials. It is reviewed here that six parasitic shear terms arise during the formulation of the four-node Mindlin plate element. Two parasitic shear terms have been identified in the in -plane shear strain polynomial while other two have been identified in each of the transverse shear strain polynomials. The element is corrected a -priori, i.e., during development, by simply removing the spurious terms from the shear strain polynomials. The computational implementation of the element in its two versions, namely, containing the parasitic shear terms (PS) and corrected for parasitic shear (SG), allows for assessments of the accuracy of results and of the deleterious effects of parasitic shear in free vibration and buckling analyses. This assessment of the parasitic shear effects is a novelty of this work. Validation of the SG model is done comparing its results with analytical results and results provided by other numerical procedures. Analyses are performed for square plates with different thickness-to-length ratios and boundary conditions. Results for thin plates provided by the PS model do not converge to the correct solutions, which indicates that parasitic shear must be eliminated. That is, analysts should not rely on refinement alone. For thick plates, PS model results can be considered acceptable as deleterious effects are really critical in thin plates. On the other hand, results provided by the SG model converge well for both thin and thick plates. The effectiveness of the SG model is established via high-accuracy results obtained in several examples. It is concluded that corrected SGN-FEM models are efficient alternatives for free-vibration and buckling analysis of Mindlin plate problems, and that precise elimination of parasitic shear is a requirement for sound analyses.