Comparison of three-dimensional flexible thin plate elements for multibody dynamic analysis: Finite element formulation and absolute nodal coordinate formulation

Three formulations for a flexible 3-D thin plate element for dynamic analysis within a multibody dynamics environment are compared: a classical Discrete Kirchhoff Triangle (DKT) with large displacements and large rotations, a fully parametrized rectangular element according to the absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) and a rectangular element according to the ANCF with an elastic midplane approach. The comparison is made by means of a small deformation static test and extensive eigenfrequency analyses on a stylized problem. It is shown that die DKT element can describe arbitrary rigid body motions and that both the DKT element and the thin plate ANCF element show good convergence to analytic solutions by increasing number of elements, and suppress shear locking which is present in the fully parametrized ANCF element.