A comparative study of menbrane finite elements based on the strain approach

Abstract

This research work deals with the extension two rectangular membrane finite elements to have the quadrilateral shape in order to extend the use of these elements for more general membrane structures. The strain approach has been used for the development of the displacement field of these two elements which have been implemented in the ABAQUS code. One of these elements has only two translations (u and v) per node (SBRIE) whereas the other element contains in  addition an in-plane rotation per node at each of the four corner nodes (SBQE). Numerical evaluation has been conducted through a series of tests related to linear plane structures and the accuracy and robustness of the strain approach have been demonstrated compared to theoretical and other finite elements.