• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.449-459
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• 2000

The original Mindlin-type degenerated shell element perform reasonably well for moderately thick shell structures. However, when full integration for analysis of thin shell is used to evaluate the stiffness matrix, the stiffness of shell element is often over-estimated due to shear or membrane locking phenomena. To correct this problem, the formulation of the new degenerated shell element is derived by the combination of two different techniques. The first type of elements(TypeⅠ) has used assumed shear strains in the natural coordinate system to overcome the shear locking problem, the reduced integration technique in in-plane strains(membrane strains) to avoid membrane locking behaviour. Another element(TypeⅡ) has applied the assumed strains to both of membrane strain and transverse shear strains. The improved degenerated shell element has been tested by several numerical problems of shell structures. Numerical results indicate that this shell element shows fast convergence and reliable solutions.