A Stabilized Algorithm of the Reissner-Mindlin Plates

This paper proposes a stabilized algorithm to design a high performance locking-free lowest order quadrilateral finite element for Reissner-Mindlin plates. It is based on the Hellinger-Reissner variational principle, which includes variables of displacements, shear stresses and bending moments. By adding a stabilization term of least-squares to the original hybrid scheme, and allowing independent approximations of the stress and moments, the stable and convergence can be ensured theoretically. Numerical examples confirm the theoretical results.