Using Plates To Represent Fillets in Finite-Element Modeling

A method that involves the use of fictitious plate elements denoted bridge plates has been developed for representing the stiffnesses of fillets in finiteelement calculations of deflections, stresses, and strains in structures. In the absence of this method, it would be necessary to either neglect the effects of fillets to minimize the computational burden or else incur a large computational burden by using complex computational models to represent the fillets accurately. In effect, the bridge plates of the present method are reduced-order models of fillets that do not yield accurate stresses within fillets but do make it possible to accurately calculate the dynamic characteristics of the structure and to approximate the effects of fillets on stresses and strains elsewhere in a structure that contains the fillets. Such approximations are accurate enough for final modal analysis and preliminary stress analyses.