Virtual Elements for Beams and Plates

Beams and plates serve as individual structures or structural members of many technical constructions such as buildings, airplanes, cars, or ships. Thus, many analytical and numerical simulation schemes were developed over the last century that can predict kinematical quantities, like deflections and rotations, and stress resultants, like normal forces, shear forces and bending moments. Classical beam models are described in any textbook on engineering mechanics, plate models and related analytical solutions can be found as well in many textbooks, for a broad range of analytical solutions.