A shallow shell finite element for the linear and non-linear analysis of cylindrical shells

This paper presents a cylindrical strain based shallow shell finite element which is developed for linear and geometrically nonlinear analysis of cylindrical shells. The developed element is rectangular inplan and has the only five essential degrees of freedom at each corner node. The displacement fields of the element satisfy the exact requirement of rigid body modes. The efficiency of the element is demonstrated by applying it to the linear and geometrically nonlinear analysis of shell structures. The suitability of the element is also tested for natural frequencies' calculations of cylindrical shells. Results obtained by the present element are compared with those available in the literature. These comparisons show that efficient convergence characteristics and accurate results can be obtained by using the present element. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.