• 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.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.179-188
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• 1997

A 4-node element for efficient finite element analysis of plate bending is presented in this paper. This element is formulated based on Mindlin plate theory to take account of shear deformation. To overcome the overestimation of shear stiffness in thin Mindlin plate element, especially in the lower order element, five nonconforming displacement modes are added to the original displacement fields. The proposed nonconforming element does not possess spurious zero-energy mode and does not show shear locking phenomena in very thin plate even for distorted mesh shapes. It was recognized from benchmark numerical tests that the displacement converges to the analytical solutions rapidly and the stress distributions are very smooth. The element also provides good results for the case of high aspect ratio.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.67-78
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• 1988

A new method of element decomposition is suggested for simple, efficient, and generalized formulation of shell finite elements. The kernel of the method is to decompose conceptually the actual element into a translational element and a difference element. The actual element is obtained by combining the two component elements. The derived element can be classified into three basic types depending on how the element is decomposed. A few complementary measures, to remove locking phenomena and thus improve the performance of the elements, have been studied. They are reduced integration, addition of internal degrees of freedom, and mixed formulation. A rational method of controlling spurious zero energy modes has also been devised. Validity and efficiency of the element with or without complementary measures have been examined through a series of numerical studies.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.671-690
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• 2004

An assumed strain finite strip method(FSM) using the non-periodic B-spline for a shell is presented. In the present method, the shape function based on the non-periodic B-splines satisfies the Kronecker delta properties at the boundaries and allows to introduce interior supports in much the same way as in a conventional finite element formulation. In the formulation for a shell, the geometry of the shell is defined by non-periodic B3-splines without any tangential vectors at the ends and the penalty function method is used to incorporate the drilling degrees of freedom. In this study, new assumed strain fields using the non-periodic B-spline function are proposed to overcome the locking problems. The strip formulated in this way does not posses any spurious zero energy modes. The versatility and accuracy of the new approach are demonstrated through a series of numerical examples.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.120-128
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• 2002

In order to analyze shell structures more accurately and effectively, a hybrid 4-node quadrilateral shell element is formulated. The element includes the frilling degrees of freedom and the independent parameter terms of the stress resultants are appropriately selected to overcome some of the shortcomings of the standard 4-node quadrilateral elements. In order to show the accuracy and convergent characteristics of the proposed shell element, three numerical examples are analyzed and the results are compared with the existed. As a result of this study, following conclusions are obtained. (1)Analysis results by the proposed element are less sensitive to the element geometric distortion. (2)The proposed element does not produce any spurious zero-energy modes

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.485-502
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• 2009

A new 8-node serendipity quadrilateral plate bending element (MQP8) based on the Mindlin-Reissner theory for the analysis of thin and moderately thick plate bending problems using Integrated Force Method is presented in this paper. The performance of this new element (MQP8) is studied for accuracy and convergence by analyzing many standard benchmark plate bending problems. This new element MQP8 performs excellent in both thin and moderately thick plate bending situations. And also this element is free from spurious/zero energy modes and free from shear locking problem.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.37-52
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• 2012

In this study, a new 4-node general shell element with 6 DOFs per node is presented. Drilling rotational degrees of freedom are introduced by the variational principle with an independent rotation field. In formulation of the element, substitute transverse shear strain fields are used to avoid shear locking, while four nonconforming modes are applied in the in-plane displacement fields as a remedy for membrane locking. In addition, a direct modification method for nonconforming modes is employed in the numerical implementation of nonconforming modes to represent constant strain states. A 9-points integration rule is adopted for volume integration in the computation of the element stiffness matrix. With the combined use of these techniques, the developed shell element has no spurious zero energy modes, and can represent a constant strain state. Several numerical tests are carried out to evaluate the performance of the new element developed. The test results show that the behavior of the elements is satisfactory.