Shell finite element based on the Proper Generalized Decomposition for the modeling of cylindrical composite structures

The introduction of the Proper Generalized Decomposition (PGD) is presented for the layer-wise modeling of heterogeneous cylindrical shells. The displacement field is approximated as a sum of separated functions of the in-plane coordinates and the transverse coordinate. This choice yields to an iterative process that consists of solving a 2D and 1D problem successively at each iteration. In the thickness direction, a fourth-order expansion in each layer is considered. For the in-plane description, classical Finite Element method is used. The approach is assessed through mechanical tests for thin/thick and deep/shallow laminated cylindrical shells. Both convergence rate and accuracy are discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.