In this study, 5-and 6-node transition plate bending elements were presented. The mixed use of these elements and regular 4-node elements enables us to refine the mesh of in-plane structure locally. These transition elements can efficiently used in modeling transition area between the portion of structure where more refined mesh is needed in order to cope with the steep displacement or stress gradient and the rest of structure.
But these transition elements with bilinear shape functions often behave badly in bending. The cause is that parasitic shear greatly stiffens the elements. Therefore, the present work is concerned with the improvement of the transition elements for the analysis of in-plane structure. The displacement field of these elements are formed by adding nonconforming modes to the displacement components of in-plane transition elements. It is shown that the results obtained by the new elements converged to the exact solutions very rapidly as the mesh is refined and exhibited reliable solutions through numerical studies for cantilever deep beam problems. It is shown that the results even for irregular mesh are satisfiable.
