A C⁰ triangular plate element with one‐point quadrature

A triangular plate element of the Mindlin type, which uses linear fields for rotations and transverse deflections, is developed. Success is achieved, in contrast to previous failures with this element, by decomposing the displacements into well‐defined bending and shear modes which are associated with bending and shear energies, respectively. The element only requires a single quadrature point, which is very attractive for nonlinear analysis. Results are presented for a variety of plate problems; the accuracy is similar to the 4‐node bilinear Mindlin plate and its rate of convergence is approximately of order h².