A LAYERED COMPOSITE SHELL ELEMENT FOR ELASTIC AND THERMOELASTIC STRESS AND STABILITY ANALYSIS AT LARGE DEFORMATIONS

A finite shell element for layered fibre reinforced composite shells has been developed. The degeneration principle is used in combination with specific kinematic assumptions. The thermo‐elastic material is either described by the behaviour of the local components, i.e. fibre and matrix material laws and geometrical configuration in each layer, or by the overall orthotropic layer material laws. Thickness integration for obtaining the different contributions to the shell element's stiffness matrix is performed analytically and prior to the numerical in‐plane integration. This leads to a considerable saving in computer time during the incremental‐iterative analysis. Geometrical non‐linearities in terms of large deformations and material non‐linearities in terms of layer craccking are taken into account. Accompanying eigenvalue analyses allow the determination of the—sometimes rather complicated—buckling behaviour with non‐linear prebuckling deformations. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd