An edge-based smoothed finite element method (ES-FEM) with stabilized discrete shear gap technique for analysis of Reissner–Mindlin plates

An edge-based smoothed finite element method (ES-FEM) for static, free vibration and buckling analyses of Reissner–Mindlin plates using 3-node triangular elements is studied in this paper. The calculation of the system stiffness matrix is performed by using the strain smoothing technique over the smoothing domains associated with edges of elements. In order to avoid the transverse shear locking and to improve the accuracy of the present formulation, the ES-FEM is incorporated with the discrete shear gap (DSG) method together with a stabilization technique to give a so-called edge-based smoothed stabilized discrete shear gap method (ES-DSG). The numerical examples demonstrated that the present ES-DSG method is free of shear locking and achieves the high accuracy compared to the exact solutions and others existing elements in the literature.