Inelastic Dynamic Analysis of Shells with the TRIC Shell Ele

The dynamic analysis of shells has attracted considerable interest in recent years. As analysts are increasingly performing more sophisticated simulations of complex structural models (some problems may comprise hundreds of thousands or even millions degrees of freedom) there is a great need for simple, and at the same time, accurate elements to conduct large-scale computational experiments. Furthermore, most available shell elements lack generality, that is, they are either isotropic or composite. In addition there is a trend in finite element analysis for numerical integration that calls for stiffness and mass matrices containing analytic algebraic expressions. To satisfy these requirements, a lot effort has been devoted to expand and further develop the natural mode finite element method for the analysis of isotropic and laminated composite shell structures. The product of this effort is the TRIC (TRIangular Composite) element, which has been presented in previous papers. The aim of this work is to present the behavior of the TRIC element in geometrical as well as nonlinear dynamic analysis of shells.

M. Papadrakakis, Z. S. Mouroutis, L. Karapitta (National Technical University Athens) and A.G. Papachristidis
VII International Conference on Computational Plasticity, COMPLAS 2003, 7-10 April, Barcelona, Spain.

Inelastic Dynamic Analysis of Shells with the TRIC Shell Element