A quadrature element formulation of geometrically nonlinear laminated composite shells incorporating thickness stretch and drilling rotation

Abstract

In this paper, a weak form quadrature element formulation of a geometrically nonlinear shell model is proposed and applied for analysis of laminated composite shell structures. Thickness stretch parameters of the shell are incorporated for introducing 3D constitutive relations in the formulation. A drilling rotation constraint on the basis of polar decomposition of a modified deformation gradient is enforced by the Lagrange multiplier method and employed for implementing spatial finite rotations. The present formulation is shown to be feasible to model complex structures and circumvent locking problems naturally. A series of numerical benchmark examples are presented to demonstrate the validity of the formulation.