A cell-based smoothed discrete shear gap method (CS-FEM-DSG3) using layerwise theory based on the C0-HSDT for analyses of composite plates

A cell-based smoothed discrete shear gap method (CS-FEM-DSG3) based on the first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) using triangular element was recently proposed for static and dynamics analyses of Mindlin plates. In this paper, the CS-FEM-DSG3 is extended and incorporated with a layerwise theory for static and free vibration analyses of composite and sandwich plates. In the layerwise theory, the behavior of each layer follows the C0-type higher-order shear deformation theory (C0-HSDT) and the condition of displacement continuity is imposed at the interfaces of layers. The shear correction factor is hence no more necessary and the accuracy of transverse shear stresses is improved significantly. In the process of formulating the system stiffness matrix of the CS-FEM-DSG3, each triangular element will be divided into three sub-triangles, and in each sub-triangle, the stabilized discrete shear gap method (DSG3) is used to compute the strains. Then the strain smoothing technique on whole the triangular element is used to smooth the strains on these three sub-triangles. Some numerical studies have been conducted to demonstrate the efficient performance of the proposed formulation.