Consistent numerical formulation of eccentric follower loads applied to shell structures Part II: Application to the analysis of prestressed concrete shell structures

Abstract

In the preceding companion paper, a more advanced theory for the geometrically nonlinear finite element(FE) analysis of the shell structures under eccentric follower loads has been carefully established. It is expected that the derived formulation can be applied realistically to wide range of practical problems. As an important application of the present theories, the numerical procedures for FE analysis of prestressed concrete(PSC) shell structures considering tendon-induced nonconservative loads are presented in this paper. The equivalent load approach is employed to implement the effect of prestressing tendon. The characteristics of the equivalent external load by the tendon are discussed and rigorously formulated into the load correction stiffness matrix(LCSM). It is found that the present numerical procedures can predict correctly the geometrically nonlinear response of the PSC shell structures up to the large deformations with the apparent contribution of the derived tangent stiffness matrices. Numerical examples of PSC shell structures are presented to demonstrate the applicability and validity of the proposed method. The present study allows more realistic and accurate analysis of shell structures which are subjected to nonconservative follower loads by exhibiting much faster convergence even for the relatively high load factors compared to the conventional method without the LCSM.