Refined non-conforming quadrilateral thin plate bending element

A reÞned non-conforming quadrilateral thin plate bending element RPQ4 which can satisfy the requirement of convergence is established such that the non-conforming displacement function can be derived directly. A simple explicit expression of a reÞned constant strain matrix can be introduced into the formulation of the standard displacement element which results in the constraint condition of interelement continuity being satisÞed in an average sense. Numerical examples are presented to show that the present model can pass the patch test and possesses high accuracy