An accurate quadrilateral plate element based on energy optimization.

In this paper, incorporating the hybrid method and the mixed interpolation method into a unified optimization framework, a 4-node quadrilateral plate element with bilinear displacement approximations is proposed. By an energy optimization tactic, among all of assumed linear bending moment modes, a 5-parametric optimal bending moment mode is selected. Using the optimal bending moment mode to improve the well-known plate element MITC4, the optimized plate element numerically possesses high accuracy at the coarse meshes in the analysis of thin/thick plates. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]