Deteriorated geometrical stiffness for higher order finite elements with application to panel flutter (Q1303148)

The author uses a fifth-order finite element having 21 degrees of freedom, under the assumptions of von Kármán plate theory, to capture geometrical nonlinearities needed for a realistic modeling of panel flutter. To reduce the amount of computations required to determine the second geometrical stiffness matrix, the order of the stress field is lowered by using a linear variation over the element while leaving the strain field unchanged. The results are compared with well-established results in the literature, and good agreement is shown.