Soft Core Plane State Structures Under Static Loads Using GDQFEM and Cell Method

The aim of this work is to study the static behavior of 2D soft core plane state structures. Deflections and inter-laminar stresses caused by forces can have serious consequences for strength and safety of these structures. Therefore, an accurate identification of the variables in hand is of considerable importance for their technical design. It is well-known that for complex plane structures there is no analytical solution, only numerical procedures can be used to solve them. In this study two numerical techniques will be taken mainly into account: the Generalized Differential Quadrature Finite Element Method (GDQFEM) and the Cell Method (CM). The former numerical technique is based on the classic Generalized Differential Quadrature (GDQ) rule and operates differently from the classic Finite Element Method (FEM). The principal novelty of this paper regards the comparison, by means of several numerical applications about soft-core structures, among GDQFEM, CM and FEM. Such a comparison appears for the first time in the literature and in this paper