Nonlinear analysis of hyperelastic plates using first-order shear deformation plate theory and a meshless method

In this paper, the static analysis of hyperelastic plates under uniform and sinusoidal distributed loading is investigated. Right Cauchy-Green deformation tensor and Lagrange strains are used to derive the nonlinear strain relations. Also, the first-order shear deformation plate theory is considered. For the first time, the governing equations of hyperelastic plates using the neo-Hookean strain energy function are derived. The Lagrange equation is utilized to implement the variational method on potential energy function. The governing nonlinear differential equations are discretized using the meshless collocation method and radial basis functions. The thin plate spline basis function is applied for deriving shape functions of the meshless method. The results are compared to the results of the finite element method. The static analysis is investigated on hyperelastic plates for uniform and sinusoidal loading and various thicknesses. Additionally, the effect of thickness is studied on the deflection of the hyperelastic plates. The results show an acceptable accuracy for static analysis of hyperelastic plates under uniform and sinusoidal loading; also, the stress contour is the same in both methods. Consequently, the meshless collocation method using the thin-plate spline basis function is an adequate method for analyzing FSDT hyperelastic plates due to no integration and imposing boundary conditions directly.