ABSTRACT
Recently we have introduced a family of hierarchic high order finite elements to solve the Reissner-Mindlin problem in its plain formulation (see Della Croce and Scapolla [ 10] , [ 11 ] ) . Our numerical results indicate that high order elements are able to absorb the locking phenomenon for a wide range of thicknesses . The locking of the numerical solution can be explained as a loss in the rate of convergence. High order elements have better convergence properties and they keep enough convergence to give satisfactory results for all thicknesses of practical interest .
