Bending and free vibration finite element analysis of thin composite plates based on isogeometric paradigm

Abstract

This paper presents an isogeometric plate finite element formulation for analysis of thin composite plates. Isogeometric finite element method is novel numerical procedure introduced by Hughes, Cottrell and Bazilevs [1] and developed to bridge the gap between CAD and FEM modeling of structures. Isogeometric analysis is based on non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) basis functions and it uses same basis functions for geometrical representation of objects and finite element analysis. Static bending and free vibration of plates based on first order shear deformation theory (FSDT) are studied. Different numerical examples are presented and results are compared to other available numerical or analytical results in order to demonstrate accuracy and performance of the method.