• Computational Structural Engineering
• /
• v.3 no.3
• /
• pp.113-123
• /
• 1990

The paper is concerned with the elasto-plastic and geometrically nonlinear analysis of shell structures using an improved degenerated shell element. In the formulation of the element stiffness, the combined use of three different techniques was made. They are; 1) an enhanced interpolation of transverse shear strains in the natural coordinate system to overcome the shear locking problem ; 2) the reduced integration technique in in-plane strains to avoid the membrane locking behavior ; and 3) selective addition of the nonconforming displacement modes to improve the element performances. This element is free of serious shear/membrane locking problems and undesirable compatible/commutable spurious kinematic deformation modes. In the formulation for plastic deformation, the concept of a layered element model is used and the material is assumed von Mises yield criterion. An incremental total Lagrangian formulation is presented which allows the calculation of arbitrarily large displacements and rotations. The resulting non-linear equilibrium equations are solved by the Netwon-Raphson method combined with load or displacement increment. The versatility and accuracy of this improved degenerated shell element are demonstrated by solving several numerical examples.