FINITE-ROTATION SHELL ELEMENTS FOR THE ANALYSIS OF FINITE-ROTATION SHELL PROBLEMS

For the analysis of shell structures with finite displacements and rotations displacement-based and mixed finite-rotation shell elements are developed starting from consistent tensorial shell theories. The constraints for the description of the deformed normal vector have been considered at the element level as subsidiary conditions so that finite rotations in arbitrary strongly nonlinear situations can be considered without any difficulty. The efficiency of the finite-rotation elements is demonstrated by numerical examples.