Advances in the development and structural applications of a rotation-free shell triangle

OÑATE EUGENIO; FLORES FERNANDO G.; ZARATE FRANCISCO

Seul

Conferencia; The Third International Conference on Advances in Structural Engineering and Mechanics; 2004

Techno Press

A family of rotation-free three node triangular shell elemens is presented. The simplest element of the family is based on an assumed constant curvature field expressed in terms of the nodal deflections of a patch of four elements and a constant membrane field computed from a standard linear interpolation of the displacements within the triangle. An enhanced version of the element is obtained by using a quadratic interpolation of the geometry in terms of the six patch nodes. This allows to compute an assumed linear membrane strain field which improves the in-plane behavior of the original element. A simple and economic version of the element using a single integration point is presented. The efficiency of  the different rotation-free shell triangles is demonstrated in many examples of application including linear and non linear analysis of shells under static and dynamic loads, the inflation and de-inflation of membranes and a sheet stamping problem.