• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.83-114
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• 2003

A new simple 3-node triangular flat-shell element with standard nodal DOF (6 DOF per node) is proposed for the linear and geometrically nonlinear analysis of very thin to thick plate and shell structures. The formulation of element GT9 (Long and Xu 1994), a generalized conforming membrane element with rigid rotational freedoms, is employed as the membrane component of the new shell element. Both one-point reduced integration scheme and a corresponding stabilization matrix are adopted for avoiding membrane locking and hourglass phenomenon. The bending component of the new element comes from a new generalized conforming Kirchhoff-Mindlin plate element TSL-T9, which is derived in this paper based on semiLoof constrains and rational shear interpolation. Thus the convergence can be guaranteed and no shear locking will happen. Furthermore, a simple hybrid procedure is suggested to improve the stress solutions, and the Updated Lagrangian formulae are also established for the geometrically nonlinear problems. Numerical results with solutions, which are solved by some other recent element models and the models in the commercial finite element software ABAQUS, are presented. They show that the proposed element, denoted as GMST18, exhibits excellent and better performance for the analysis of thin-think plates and shells in both linear and geometrically nonlinear problems.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.271-274
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• 2007

The finite element linear buckling analysis of folded plate structures using adaptive h-refinement methods is presented in this paper. The variable-node flat shell element used in this study possesses the drilling D.O.F. which, in addition to improvement of the element behavior, permits an easy connection to other elements with six degrees of freedom per node. The Box-typed structures can be analyzed using these developed flat shell elements. By introducing the variable node elements some difficulties associated with connecting the different layer patterns, which are common in the adaptive h-refinement on quadrilateral mesh, can be overcome. To obtain better stress field for the error estimation, the super-convergent patch recovery is used. The convergent buckling modes and the critical loads associated with these modes can be obtained.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.867-890
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• 2014

This paper deals with the geometric nonlinear bending analysis of laminated composite stiffened plates subjected to uniform transverse loading. The eight-noded degenerated shell element and three-noded degenerated curved beam element with five degrees of freedom per node are adopted in the present analysis to model the plate and stiffeners respectively. The Green-Lagrange strain displacement relationship is adopted and the total Lagrangian approach is taken in the formulation. The convergence study of the present formulation is carried out first and the results are compared with the results published in the literature. The stiffener element is reformulated taking the torsional rigidity in an efficient manner. The effects of lamination angle, depth of stiffener and number of layers, on the bending response of the composite stiffened plates are considered and the results are discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society For Composite Materials Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.69-72
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• 2004

A new three-node triangular shell element based on higher order zig-zag theory is developed for laminated composite shells with multiple delaminations. The present higher order zig-zag shell theory is described in a general curvilinear coordinate system and in general tensor notation. All the complicated curvatures of surface including twisting curvatures can be described in an exact manner in the present shell element because this element is based on geometrically exact surface representation. The displacement field of the proposed finite element includes slope of deflection, which requires continuity between element interfaces. Thus the nonconforming shape function of Specht's three-node triangular plate bending element is employed to interpolate out-of-plane displacement. The present element passes the bending and twisting patch tests in flat surface configurations. The developed element is evaluated through the eigenvalue problems of composite cylindrical shells with multiple delaminations. Through the numerical examples it is demonstrated that the proposed shell element is efficient because it has minimal degrees of freedom per node. The present shell element should serve as a powerful tool in the prediction of natural frequency and modes of multi-layered thick laminated shell structures with arbitrary-shaped multiple delaminations.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2019

In the present study, the behavior of steel plate shear walls (SPSW) with variable column flexural stiffness is experimentally and numerically investigated. Altogether six one-bay one-story specimens, three moment resisting frames (MRFs) and three SPSWs, were designed, fabricated and tested. Column flexural stiffness of the first specimen pair (one MRF and one SPSW) corresponded to the value required by the design codes, while for the second and third pair it was reduced by 18% and 36%, respectively. The quasi-static cyclic test result indicate that SPSW with reduced column flexural stiffness have satisfactory performance up to 4% story drift ratio, allow development of the tension field over the entire infill panel, and cause negligible column "pull-in" deformation which indicates that prescribed minimal column flexural stiffness value, according to AISC 341-10, might be conservative. In addition, finite element (FE) pushover simulations using shell elements were developed. Such FE models can predict SPSW cyclic behavior reasonably well and can be used to conduct numerical parametric analyses. It should be mentioned that these FE models were not able to reproduce column "pull-in" deformation indicating the need for further development of FE simulations with cyclic load introduction which will be part of another paper.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Advanced Composite Structures
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2010

The dynamic instability analysis of delaminated composite structures subjected to in-plane pulsating forces is carried out based on the higher order shell theory of Sanders. In the finite element (FE) formulation, the seven degrees of freedom per each node are used with transformations in order to fit the displacement continuity conditions at the delamination region. The boundaries of the instability regions are determined using the method proposed by Bolotin. The numerical results obtained for skew plates and shells are in good agreement with those reported by other investigators. The new results for delaminated skew plate and shell structures in this study mainly show the effect of the interactions between the radius-length ratio and other various parameters, for example, skew angles, delamination size, the fiber angle of layer and location of delamination in the layer direction. The effect of the magnitude of the periodic in-plane load on the instability regions is also investigated.

• Proceeding of KASS Symposium
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.227-232
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• 2006

This paper investigate the optimum thickness distribution of plate structure with different essential boundary conditions in the fundamental natural frequency maximization problem. In this study, the fundamental natural frequency is considered as the objective function to be maximized and the initial volume of structures is used as the constraint function. The computer-aided geometric design (CAGD) such as Coon's patch representation is used to represent the thickness distribution of plates. A reliable degenerated shell finite element is adopted calculate the accurate fundamental natural frequency of the plates. Robust optimization algorithms implemented in the optimizer DoT are adopted to search optimum thickness values during the optimization iteration. Finally, the optimum thickness distribution with respect to different boundary condition

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.229-236
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• 2004

A new three-node triangular shell element based on higher order zig-zag theory is developed for laminated composite shells with multiple delaminations. The present higher order zig-zag shell theory is described in a general curvilinear coordinate system and in general tensor notation. All the complicated curvatures of surface including twisting curvatures can be described in an exact manner in the present shell element because this element is based on geometrically exact surface representation. The displacement field of the proposed finite element includes slope of deflection. which requires continuity between element interfaces. Thus the nonconforming shape function of Specht's three-node triangular plate bending element is employed to interpolate out-of-plane displacement. The present element passes the bending and twisting patch tests in flat surface configurations. The developed element is evaluated through the buckling problems of composite cylindrical shells with multiple delaminations. Through the numerical examples it is demonstrated that the proposed shell element is efficient because it has minimal degrees of freedom per node. The accuracy of the present element is demonstrated in the prediction of buckling loads and buckling modes of shells with multiple delaminations. The present shell element should serve as a powerful tool in the prediction of buckling loads and modes of multi-layered thick laminated shell structures with arbitrary-shaped multiple delaminations.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.747-764
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• 2022

The design codes and calculation methods related to soil-steel composite bridges and culverts only specify the minimum soil cover depth. This value is connected with the bridge span and shell height. In the case of static and dynamic loads (like passing vehicles), such approach seems to be quite reasonable. However, it is important to know how the soil cover depth affects the behaviour of soil-steel composite bridges under seismic excitation. This paper presents the results of a numerical study of soil-steel bridges with different soil cover depths (1.00, 2.00, 2.40, 3.00, 4.00, 5.00, 6.00 and 7.00 m) under seismic excitation. In addition, the same soil cover depths with different boundary conditions of the soil-steel bridge were analysed. The analysed bridge has two closed pipe-arches in its cross section. The load-carrying structure was constructed as two shells assembled from corrugated steel plate sheets, designed with a depth of 0.05 m, pitch of 0.15 m, and plate thickness of 0.003 m. The shell span is 4.40 m, and the shell height is 2.80 m. Numerical analysis was conducted using the DIANA programme based on the finite element method. A nonlinear model with El Centro records and the time history method was used to analyse the problem.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.41-61
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• 1998

A state-of-the-art report on the new finite elements formulated by the addition of nonconforming displacement modes has been presented. The development of a series improved nonconforming finite elements for the analysis of plate and shell structures is described in the first part of this paper. These new plate and shell finite elements are established by the combined use of different improvement schemes such as; the addition of nonconforming modes, the reduced (or selective) integration, and the construction of the substitute shear strain fields. The improvement achieved may be attributable to the fact that the merits of these improvement techniques are merged into the formation of the new elements in a complementary manner. It is shown that the results obtained by the new elements give significantly improved solutions without any serious defects such as; the shear locking, spurious zero energy mode for the linear as well as nonlinear benchmark problems. Recent developments in the transition elements that have a variable number of mid-side nodes and can be effectively used in the adaptive mesh refinement are presented in the second part. Finally, the nonconforming transition flat shell elements with drilling degrees of freedom are also presented.