ON THE ASSUMED DISPLACEMENT-FIELDS OF A SHALLOW CURVED SHELL FINITE-ELEMENT

An essential requirement for a satisfactory curved shell finite element is a capability for exact representation of rigid body movements: otherwise serious difficulties can occur, as is well known from early developments in shell finite element analysis. It is shown in this paper that appropriate assumed displacement fields for a particular shallow curved shell finite element with 18 degrees of freedom can be obtained in a very simple, yet apparently novel, way which permits the exact recovery of all rigid body movements. The shallow curved shell finite element considered here is constructed on a triangular flat facet approximation to a general thin elastic shell; it has quadratic middle surface geometry to allow for :accurate modelling of arbitrary curvatures.