A co-rotational 8-node assumed strain element for large displacement elasto-plastic analysis of plates and shells

Abstract

The formulation of a non-linear shear deformable shell element is presented for the solution of stability problems of stiffened plates and shells. The formulation of the geometrical stiffness presented here is exactly defined on the midsurface and is efficient for analyzing stability problems of thick plates and shells by incorporating bending moment and transverse shear resultant force. As a result of the explicit integration of the tangent stiffness matrix, this formulation is computationally very efficient in incremental nonlinear analysis. The element is free of both membrane and shear locking behaviour by using the assumed strain method such that the element performs very well in the thin shells. By using six degrees of freedom per node, the present element can model stiffened plate and shell structures. The formulation includes large displacement effects and elasto-plastic material behaviour. The material is assumed to be isotropic and elasto-plastic obeying Von Mises's yield condition and its associated flow rules. The results showed good agreement with references and computational efficiency.