Viscoelastic behavior of shear-deformable plates

The purpose of this study is to extend a new mixed-type finite element (MFE) model, developed earlier by the present authors for the analysis of viscoelastic Kirchhoff plates [Aköz, A. Y., Kadloǧlu, F. and Tekin, G. [2015] "Quasi-static and dynamic analysis of viscoelastic plates", Mechanics of Time-Dependent Materials 19(4), 483-503], to study the quasi-static and dynamic responses of first-order shear-deformable (FSD) linear viscoelastic Mindlin-Reissner plates. In this context, various viscoelastic material models are discussed for the plate structure to read from them possible patterns of viscoelastic behavior. The developed MFE named VPLT32 is C0-continuous four-node linear isoparametric plate element with eight degrees of freedom per node. Hereditary integral form of the constitutive law with constant Poisson's ratio is used. A new functional in the Laplace-Carson domain suitable for MFE formulation in the same domain is developed by employing Gâteaux differential (GD) method. The unique aspects of this study and the possible contributions of the proposed method to the literature can be summarized as follows: By using this new functional, moment and shear force values that are important for engineers can be obtained directly without any mathematical operation. In addition, geometric and dynamic boundary conditions can be obtained easily and a field variable can be included to the functional systematically. Moreover, shear-locking problem can be eliminated by using the GD method. Dubner and Abate numerical Laplace inversion technique is adopted to transform the obtained solution from the Laplace-Carson domain into the real-time domain. A set of numerical examples are presented not only to demonstrate the validity and accuracy of the proposed MFE formulation but also to examine the effects of load, geometry and material parameters on the viscoelastic response of FSD Mindlin-Reissner plates and to give a better insight into time-dependent behavior of engineering thick plate problems.