A Survey of Stabilized Plate Elements

We present two families of finite element methods for the Reissner- Mindlin plate model. The families are based on a stabilized formulation which circumvents the requirement that the finite element spaces should satisfy the Babuška- Brezzi conditions. In the first family the polynomial order of the basis functions for the deflection is one higher than that for the rotation. In the second family the stabilization is combined with the MITC interpolation technique, which enables equal order basis functions. We review the stability and error estimates which show that the methods are ”locking-free” and optimally convergent.