Development of shear locking-free shell elements using an enhanced assumed strain formulation

Shear Locking in a Plane Elasticity Problem and the Enhanced Assumed Strain Method

The method of enhanced assumed strains (EAS) is a popular tool for avoiding locking phenomena, e.g., a remedy for shear locking in plane elasticity. We consider bending-dominated problems on thin bodies which can be treated as beams and prove that the degree of approximation of the EAS method is at least as good as that of a beam model. The hypercircle method is combined with arguments of nonco...

A Locking-free Three-node Shell Finite Element Formulation

A simple triangular shell finite element with fifteen degrees of freedom for the analysis of general shell structures is presented in this work. The element uses a substitute transverse shear strain field to avoid locking, and is formulated on the basis of RSDS-element (Resultant Stress Degenerated Shell Element) approach, which leads to very simple strain-displacement expressions. The substitu...

A new prismatic solid-shell element ’SHB6’ : assumed-strain formulation and evaluation on benchmark problems

Analysis of strain localization in strain-softening hyperelastic materials, using assumed stress hybrid elements

Newly developed assumed stress finite elements, based on a mixed variational principle which includes unsymmetric stress, rotation (drilling degrees of freedom), pressure, and displacement as variables, are presented. The elements are capable of handling geometrically nonlinear as well as materially nonlinear two dimensional problems, with and without volume constraints. As an application of th...

Strain based panel elements for shear wall analysis

The finite element method (FEM) can be applied to practically analyze the tall buildings in which the shear walls are used to resist the lateral loads. Accordingly, a variety of displacement and strain-based as well as frame macro elements have been proposed for analysis of the tall buildings. With respect to application of the lower order plane stress elements, analytical problems may arise wi...