THE APPLICATION OF A GENERALIZED CONFORMING ELEMENT FOR THIN-THICK PLATES IN THE ANALYSIS OF THICK RAFT FOUNDATION

Timoshenko beam theory is applied to get the thick plate’s shearing strain field. In addition, the plate’s deflection field is assumed to be an imperfective polynomial function of four orders. Then, according to generalized conforming theory, the equations combined with the two fields are established. A quadrilateral element for both thin and thick plates is constructed. Based on the minimum potential energy principle with the consideration of the interaction between the plates and Winkler’s foundation, the stiffness equation of element is obtained. In the end, the practicability and accuracy of the fore-mentioned element are proved by an engineering example.