Membrane quadrilateral finite elements with rotational degrees of freedom

Abstract A couple of new membrane elements with rotational degrees of freedom are presented. MQ2 is a quadrilateral membrane element with quadratic displacement interpolation and MQ3 is a quadrilateral with cubic displacement interpolation. Mid-side tangential displacements are used as the incompatible mode interpolation parameters to improve the elements' performance in the distorted configuration. Both membrane elements are based on a sound variational foundation and both exhibit an excellent performance over a set of problems.

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