Two efficient hybrid-trefftz elements for plate bending analysis

this study is devoted to the analysis of the reissner-mindlin plate bending. in this paper, the hybrid-trefftz strategy will be utilized. two novel and efficient elements are formulated in details. they are a triangular element (tht) and a quadrilateral element (qht), which have 9 and 12 degrees of freedom, respectively. in this approach, two independent displacement fields are defined; one within the element and the other on the edges of the element. the internal field is selected in such a manner that the governing equation of thick plates could be satisfied. boundary field is related to the nodal degree of freedoms by the boundary interpolation functions. to calculate these functions, the edges of the element are assumed to behave like a timoshenko beam. the high accuracy and efficiency of the proposed elements and absence of the shear locking in these formulations are all proven, using various numerical tests.