A multi-director formulation for nonlinear elastic-viscoelastic layered shells

Abstract

A C 0 finite element formulation for nonlinear analysis of multi-layered shells comprised of elastic and viscoelastic layers is presented for applications involving small strains but finite rotations. The elastic and viscoelastic layers may occupy arbitrary layer locations and the formulation is applicable to thick and thin shells. The formulation utilizes a three-dimensional variational approach in which the layered shell is represented as a multi-director field. The incorporated kinematic theory describes, within individual layers, the effects of transverse shear and transverse normal strain to arbitrary orders in the layer thickness coordinate. Stresses are computed through the three-dimensional constitutive equations and the usual “zero normal stress” shell hypothesis is not employed. Sufficiently general constitutive equations for the viscoelastic layers are proposed in objective rate form and a product algorithm, based on an operator split in the complete set of constitutive equations, is used for the temporal integration of the rate equations. The definition of the tangent operator, used in Newton's method for the solution of the nonlinear equations, is derived consistently from the product algorithm. Observations on the use of reduced/selective integration in the presence of high order kinematics are made and a number of numerical examples are presented to illustrate the capability of the formulation.