Remarks on the asymptotic behaviour of Koiter shells

We review some results about the behaviour of a general Koiter shell, in the framework of linear elasticity. In particular, we investigate the asymptotics (for the thickness tending to zero) of the energy functional and of the percentage of the energy which is stored in the bending term. Such an analysis is motivated by the need to better understand how to numerically treat an arbitrary thin shell, when the discretization is performed using a finite element strategy. We present some instances to which our theory can be applied. Some numerical tests confirming our theoretical predictions are also provided. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.