A new quadrilateral 5-node non-conforming membrane element with drilling DOF

In this paper, a new quadrilateral 5-node non-conforming membrane element with drilling degrees of freedom is presented. The main advantage of these elements is the relatively small number of integration points to evaluate a stiffness matrix comparing to the existing transition membrane elements (CLM elements). Moreover, the presented elements pass the patch test by virtue of the Direct Modification Method incorporated into the element formulation. The presented 5-node elements are proved to be very efficient when used in the local mesh refinement for the in-plane structures which have stress concentrations. And some numerical studies also show the good performance of the new element developed in this study.