• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.17-34
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• 1994

This paper proposes a new four node degenerated shell element. In the formulation of the new element, the assumed covariant shear strains are used to avoid the shear locking problem, and the assumed covariant membrane strains are applied to alleviate the membrane locking problem and also to improve the membrane bending performance. The assumed covariant strains are obtained from the covariant strain field defined with respect to the element natural coordinate system. This formulation enables us to obtain a shell element, which does not produce spurious singular modes, avoids locking phenomena, and excels in calculation efficiency. Several examples in this paper indicate that, despite its simplicity, the achieved accuracy and convergence are satisfactory.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-10
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• 1991

The paper is concerned with the analysis of laminated composite 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. An incremental total Lagrangian formulation is presented which allows the calculation of arbitrarily large displacements. The resulting non-linear equilibrium equations are solved by the Newton-Raphson method. The versatility and accuracy of this improved degenerated shell element are demonstrated by solving several numerical examples.

• 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.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.2535-2542
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• 1993

Two-noded curved beam elements, CMLC (field-consistent membrane and linear curvature) and IMLC(field-inconsistent membrane and linear curvature) are developed on the basis of Timoshenko's beam theory and curvilinear coordinate. The curved beam element is developed by the separation of the radial deflection into the bending deflection. In the CMLC element, field-consistent axial strain interpolation is adapted for removing the membrane locking. The CMLC element shows the rapid and stable convergence on the wide range of curved beam radius to thickness. The field-consistent axial strain and the separation of radial deformation produces the most efficient linear element possible.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.97-107
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• 1990

The development of an improved degenerated shell element is presented in this paper. In the formulation of this element, an enhanced interpolation of transverse shear strains in the natural coordinate system is used to overcome the shear locking problem ; the reduced integration technique in in-plane strains is applied to avoid the membrane locking behavior ; and selective addition of the nonconforming displacement modes improve the element performances. This element is free of serious locking problems and undesirable compatible or commutable spurious kinematic deformation modes, and passes the patch tests. To illustrate the performance of this improved degenerated shell element, some benchmark problems are presented. Numerical results indicate that the new element shows fast convergence and reliable solutions.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.853-865
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• 1997

The design of robust plate and shell elements has been a very challenging area for several decades. The main difficulty has been the shear locking phenomenon in plate elements and the shear and membrane locking phenomena together in the shell elements. Among the various artifices or devices which are used to develop elements free of these problems is the field-consistency approach. In this paper this approach is reviewed, It turns out that not only Mindlin type elements but also elements based on higher-order theories could be developed using the technique.

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

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.207-231
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• 1999

A versatile 4-node shell element which is useful for the analysis of arbitrary shell structures is presented. The element is developed by flat shell approach, i.e., by combining a membrane element with a Mindlin plate element. The proposed element has six degrees of freedom per node and permits an easy connection to other types of finite elements. In the plate bending part, an improved Mindlin plate has been established by the combined use of the addition of non-conforming displacement modes (N) and the substitute shear strain fields (S). In the membrane part, the nonconforming displacement modes are also added to the displacement fields to improve the behavior of membrane element with drilling degrees of freedom and the modified numerical integration (M) is used to overcome the membrane locking problem. Thus the element is designated as NMS-4F. The rigid link correction technique is adopted to consider the effect of out-of-plane warping. The shell element proposed herein passes the patch tests, does not show any spurious mechanism and does not produce shear and membrane locking phenomena. It is shown that the element produces reliable solutions even for the distorted meshes through the analysis of benchmark problems.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.595-610
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• 2002

This paper presents an efficiency of various non-conforming (NC) modes in development of a series of new finite elements with the special emphasis on 4-node quadrilateral elements. The NC modes have been used as a key scheme to improve the behaviors of various types of new finite elements, i.e., Mindlin plate bending elements, membrane elements with drilling degrees of freedom, flat shell elements. The NC modes are classified into three groups according to the 'correction constants' of 'Direct Modification Method'. The first group is 'basic NC modes', which have been widely used by a number of researchers in the finite element communities. The basic NC modes are effective to improve the behaviors of regular shaped elements. The second group is 'hierarchical NC modes' which improve the behaviors of distorted elements effectively. The last group is 'higher order NC modes' which improve the behaviors of plate-bending elements. When the basic NC modes are combined with hierarchical or higher order NC modes, the elements become insensitive to mesh distortions. When the membrane component of a flat shell has 'hierarchical NC modes', the membrane locking can be suppressed. A number of numerical tests are carried out to show the positive effect of aforementioned various NC modes incorporated into various types of finite elements.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.223-239
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• 2023

Geometric nonlinear performance simulation and analysis of complex modern buildings and industrial products require high-performance shell elements. Balancing multiple aspects of performance in the one geometric nonlinear analysis element remains challenging. We present a new shell element, flat shell DKMGQ-CR (Co-rotational Discrete Kirchhoff-Mindlin Generalized Conforming Quadrilateral), for linear and geometric nonlinear analysis of both thick and thin shells. The DKMGQ-CR shell element was developed by combining the advantages of high-performance membrane and plate elements in a unified coordinate system and introducing the co-rotational formulation to adapt to large deformation analysis. The effectiveness of linear and geometric nonlinear analysis by DKMGQ-CR is verified through the tests of several classical numerical benchmarks. The computational results show that the proposed new element adapts to mesh distortion and effectively alleviates shear and membrane locking problems in linear and geometric nonlinear analysis. Furthermore, the DKMGQ-CR demonstrates high performance in analyzing thick and thin shells. The proposed element DKMGQ-CR is expected to provide an accurate, efficient, and convenient tool for the geometric nonlinear analysis of shells.