A simple triangular curved shell element

Abstract

A simple triangular shell element which incorporates the effects of coupling between membrane and flexural behaviour and avoids membrane locking is described. The element uses a discrete Kirchhoff bending formulation and a constant strain membrane element. For the purpose of permitting inextensional modes and thus avoiding membrane locking, a decomposition technique, which can also be viewed as a strain projection method, is used. The method is illustrated first for a beam element and then for a triangular shell element. Results are presented for a variety of linear static problems to illustrate its accuracy and some highly non‐linear problems to indicate its applicability to collapse analysis.

Citation

Stolarski, H., Belytschko, T., Carpenter, N. and Kennedy, J.M. (1984), "A simple triangular curved shell element", Engineering Computations, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 210-218. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb023574