This work addresses the development of a new four-noded rectangular Mindlin plate bending element (MP4C) with a crack\r\nwhich consists of three degrees of freedom (DOF) at each corner node. The crack in the element is assumed to be not closed\r\nand nonpropagating. The crack affects the elastic strain energy and the flexibility matrix of the element, whereas the mass matrix\r\nremains unchanged. The complete element stiffness matrix is constructed as the inverse of the combined flexibility matrix of both\r\nnoncracked and cracked elements. To evaluate the behavior of the proposed cracked Mindlin plate element, numerical examples\r\nare provided. They are based on developing user subroutines in ABAQUS. The finite element analysis results using the developed\r\nplate element are in excellent agreement with those reported in previous work. The cracked plate element developed in this paper\r\nprovides a simple and robust approach to model the real service conditions in plate-like structures.
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