Optimal solid shell element for large deformable composite structures with piezoelectric layers and active vibration control

In this paper, we present an optimal low‐order accurate piezoelectric solid‐shell element formulation to model active composite shell structures that can undergo large deformation and large overall motion. This element has only displacement and electric degrees of freedom (dofs), with no rotational dofs, and an optimal number of enhancing assumed strain (EAS) parameters to pass the patch tests (both membrane and out‐of‐plane bending). The combination of the present optimal piezoelectric solid‐shell element and the optimal solid‐shell element previously developed allows for efficient and accurate analyses of large deformable composite multilayer shell structures with piezoelectric layers. To make the 3‐D analysis of active composite shells containing discrete piezoelectric sensors and actuators even more efficient, the composite solid‐shell element is further developed here. Based on the mixed Fraeijs de Veubeke–Hu–Washizu (FHW) variational principle, the in‐plane and out‐of‐plane bending behaviours are improved via a new and efficient enhancement of the strain tensor. Shear‐locking and curvature thickness locking are resolved effectively by using the assumed natural strain (ANS) method. We also present an optimal‐control design for vibration suppression of a large deformable structure based on the general finite element approach. The linear‐quadratic regulator control scheme with output feedback is used as a control law on the basis of the state space model of the system. Numerical examples involving static analyses and dynamic analyses of active shell structures having a large range of element aspect ratios are presented. Active vibration control of a composite multilayer shell with distributed piezoelectric sensors and actuators is performed to test the present element and the control design procedure. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A robust non‐linear mixed hybrid quadrilateral shell element

In the paper a non‐linear quadrilateral shell element for the analysis of thin structures is presented. The variational formulation is based on a Hu–Washizu functional with independent displacement, stress and strain fields. The interpolation matrices for the mid‐surface displacements and rotations as well as for the stress resultants and strains are specified. Restrictions on the interpolation functions concerning fulfillment of the patch test and stability are derived. The developed mixed hybrid shell element possesses the correct rank and fulfills the in‐plane and bending patch test. Using Newton's method the finite element approximation of the stationary condition is iteratively solved. Our formulation can accommodate arbitrary non‐linear material models for finite deformations. In the examples we present results for isotropic plasticity at finite rotations and small strains as well as bifurcation problems and post‐buckling response. The essential feature of the new element is the robustness in the equilibrium iterations. It allows very large load steps in comparison to other element formulations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A finite‐strain quadrilateral shell element based on discrete Kirchhoff–Love constraints

This paper improves the 16 degrees‐of‐freedom quadrilateral shell element based on pointwise Kirchhoff–Love constraints and introduces a consistent large strain formulation for this element. The model is based on classical shell kinematics combined with continuum constitutive laws. The resulting element is valid for large rotations and displacements. The degrees‐of‐freedom are the displacements at the corner nodes and one rotation at each mid‐side node. The formulation is free of enhancements, it is almost fully integrated and is found to be immune to locking or unstable modes. The patch test is satisfied. In addition, the formulation is simple and amenable to efficient incorporation in large‐scale codes as no internal degrees‐of‐freedom are employed, and the overall calculations are very efficient. Results are presented for linear and non‐linear problems. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An optimal versatile partial hybrid stress solid‐shell element for the analysis of multilayer composites

In the present contribution we propose an optimal low‐order versatile partial hybrid stress solid‐shell element that can be readily employed for a wide range of geometrically linear elastic structural analyses, that is, from shell‐like isotropic structures to multilayer anisotropic composites. This solid‐shell element has eight nodes with only displacement degrees of freedom and only a few internal parameters that provide the locking‐free behavior and accurate interlaminar shear stress resolution through the element thickness. These elements can be stacked on top of each other to model multilayer composite structures, fulfilling the interlaminar shear stress continuity at the interlayer surfaces and zero traction conditions on the top and bottom surfaces of composite laminates. The element formulation is based on the modified form of the well‐known Fraeijs de Veubeke–Hu–Washizu multifield variational principle with enhanced assumed strains formulation and assumed natural strains formulation to alleviate the different types of locking phenomena in solid‐shell elements. The distinct feature of the present formulation is its ability to accurately calculate the interlaminar shear stress field in multilayer structures, which is achieved by the introduction of the assumed interlaminar shear stress field in a standard enhanced assumed strains formulation based on the Fraeijs de Veubeke–Hu–Washizu principle. The numerical testing of the present formulation, employing a variety of popular numerical benchmark examples related to element patch test, convergence, mesh distortion, shell and laminated composite analyses, proves its accuracy for a wide range of structural analyses.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A mixed solid‐shell element for the analysis of laminated composites

This paper presents a versatile low order locking‐free mixed solid‐shell element that can be readily employed for a wide range of linear elastic structural analyses, that is, from thick isotropic structures to multilayer anisotropic composites. This solid‐shell element has eight nodes with only displacement degrees of freedom and few assumed stress parameters that provide very accurate interlaminar stress calculations through the element thickness. These elements can be stacked on top of each other to model multilayer structures, fulfilling the interlaminar stress continuity at the interlayer surfaces and zero traction conditions on the top and bottom surfaces of the laminate. The element formulation is based on the well‐known Fraeijs de Veubeke–Hu–Washizu mixed variational principle with enhanced assumed strains formulation and assumed natural strains formulation to alleviate the different types of locking phenomena in solid‐shell elements. The distinct feature of the present formulation is its ability to accurately calculate the interlaminar stress field in multilayer structures, which is achieved by the introduction of a constraint equation on the interlaminar stresses in the Fraeijs de Veubeke–Hu–Washizu principle‐based enhanced assumed strains formulation. The intelligent computer coding of the present formulation makes the present element appropriate for a wide range of structural analyses. To assess the present formulation's accuracy, a variety of popular numerical benchmark examples related to element convergence, mesh distortion, and shell and laminated composite analyses are investigated and the results are compared with those available in the literature. These benchmark examples reveal that the proposed formulation provides very good results for the structural analysis of shells and multilayer composites. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A mixed shell formulation accounting for thickness strains and finite strain 3d material models

A non‐linear quadrilateral shell element for the analysis of thin structures is presented. The Reissner–Mindlin theory with inextensible director vector is used to develop a three‐field variational formulation with independent displacements, stress resultants and shell strains. The interpolation of the independent shell strains consists of two parts. The first part corresponds to the interpolation of the stress resultants. Within the second part independent thickness strains are considered. This allows incorporation of arbitrary non‐linear 3d constitutive equations without further modifications. The developed mixed hybrid shell element possesses the correct rank and fulfills the in‐plane and bending patch test. The essential feature of the new element is the robustness in the equilibrium iterations. It allows very large load steps in comparison with other element formulations. We present results for finite strain elasticity, inelasticity, bifurcation and post‐buckling problems. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An improved solid‐shell element based on ANS and EAS concepts

This paper presents an eight‐node nonlinear solid‐shell element for static problems. The main goal of this work is to develop a solid‐shell formulation with improved membrane response compared with the previous solid‐shell element (MOS2013), presented in 1 . Assumed natural strain concept is implemented to account for the transverse shear and thickness strains to circumvent the curvature thickness and transverse shear locking problems. The enhanced assumed strain approach based on the Hu–Washizu variational principle with six enhanced assumed strain degrees of freedom is applied. Five extra degrees of freedom are applied on the in‐plane strains to improve the membrane response and one on the thickness strain to alleviate the volumetric and Poisson's thickness locking problems. The ensuing element performs well in both in‐plane and out‐of‐plane responses, besides the simplicity of implementation. The element formulation yields exact solutions for both the membrane and bending patch tests. The formulation is extended to the geometrically nonlinear regime using the corotational approach, explained in 2 . Numerical results from benchmarks show the robustness of the formulation in geometrically linear and nonlinear problems. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A family of ANS four‐node exact geometry shell elements in general convected curvilinear coordinates

The non‐conventional exact geometry shell elements based on the Timoshenko–Mindlin kinematics with five displacement degrees of freedom are proposed. The term ‘exact geometry (EXG)’ reflects the fact that coefficients of the first and second fundamental forms of the reference surface and Christoffel symbols are taken exactly at every Gauss integration point. The choice of only displacements as fundamental shell unknowns gives an opportunity to derive strain–displacement relationships, which are invariant under rigid‐body shell motions in a convected curvilinear coordinate system. This paper presents a newly developed family consisting of three hybrid and one displacement‐based four‐node EXG shell elements. To avoid shear and membrane locking and have no spurious zero energy modes, the ANS concept is employed. The ANS interpolations satisfy exactly the plate compatibility equation for in‐plane strains. As a result, all EXG shell elements developed pass membrane and bending plate patch tests and exhibit a superior performance in the case of distorted coarse mesh configurations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hybrid‐stress six‐node prismatic elements

This paper presents three novel hybrid‐stress six‐node prismatic elements. Starting from the element displacement interpolation, the equilibrating non‐constant stress modes for the first element are identified and orthogonalized with respect to the constant stress modes for higher computational efficiency. For the second element, the non‐constant stress modes are non‐equilibrating and chosen for the sake of stabilizing the reduced‐integrated element. The first two elements are intended for three‐dimensional continuum analysis with both passing the patch test for three‐dimensional continuum elements. The third element is primarily intended for plate/shell analysis. Shear locking is alleviated by a new assumed strain scheme which preserves the element accuracy with respect to the twisting load. Furthermore, the Poisson's locking along the in‐plane and out‐of‐plane directions is overcome by using the hybrid‐stress modes of the first element. The third element passes the patch test for plate/shell elements. Unless the element assumes the right prismatic geometry, it fails the patch test for three‐dimensional continuum elements. It will be seen that all the proposed elements are markedly more accurate than the conventional fully integrated element. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A reduced integration solid‐shell finite element based on the EAS and the ANS concept—Geometrically linear problems

In this paper a new reduced integration eight‐node solid‐shell finite element is presented. The enhanced assumed strain (EAS) concept based on the Hu–Washizu variational principle requires only one EAS degree‐of‐freedom to cure volumetric and Poisson thickness locking. One key point of the derivation is the Taylor expansion of the inverse Jacobian with respect to the element center, which closely approximates the element shape and allows us to implement the assumed natural strain (ANS) concept to eliminate the curvature thickness and the transverse shear locking. The second crucial point is a combined Taylor expansion of the compatible strain with respect to the center of the element and the normal through the element center leading to an efficient and locking‐free hourglass stabilization without rank deficiency. Hence, the element requires only a single integration point in the shell plane and at least two integration points in thickness direction. The formulation fulfills both the membrane and the bending patch test exactly, which has, to the authors' knowledge, not yet been achieved for reduced integration eight‐node solid‐shell elements in the literature. Owing to the three‐dimensional modeling of the structure, fully three‐dimensional material models can be implemented without additional assumptions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A 3‐node flat triangular shell element with corner drilling freedoms and transverse shear correction

The formulation, implementation and testing of simple, efficient and robust shell finite elements have challenged investigators over the past four decades. A new 3‐node flat triangular shell element is developed by combination of a membrane component and a plate bending component. The ANDES‐based membrane component includes rotational degrees of freedom, and the refined nonconforming element method‐based bending component involves a transverse shear correction. Numerical examples are carried out for benchmark tests. The results show that compared with some popular shell elements, the present one is simple but exhibits excellent all‐around properties (for both membrane‐and bending‐dominated situations), such as free of aspect ratio locking, passing the patch test, free of shear locking, good convergence and high suitability for thin to moderately thick plates. The developed element has already been adopted in a warpage simulation package for injection molding. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A discontinuous Galerkin formulation of non‐linear Kirchhoff–Love shells

Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods provide a means of weakly enforcing the continuity of the unknown‐field derivatives and have particular appeal in problems involving high‐order derivatives. This feature has previously been successfully exploited (Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng. 2008; 197 :2901–2929) to develop a formulation of linear Kirchhoff–Love shells considering only the membrane and bending responses. In this proposed one‐field method—the displacements are the only unknowns, while the displacement field is continuous, the continuity in the displacement derivative between two elements is weakly enforced by recourse to a DG formulation. It is the purpose of the present paper to extend this formulation to finite deformations and non‐linear elastic behaviors. While the initial linear formulation was relying on the direct linear computation of the effective membrane stress and effective bending couple‐stress from the displacement field at the mid‐surface of the shell, the non‐linear formulation considered implies the evaluation of the general stress tensor across the shell thickness, leading to a reformulation of the internal forces of the shell. Nevertheless, since the interface terms resulting from the discontinuous Galerkin method involve only the resultant couple‐stress at the edges of the shells, the extension to non‐linear deformations is straightforward. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An eight‐node hybrid‐stress solid‐shell element for geometric non‐linear analysis of elastic shells

This paper presents eight‐node solid‐shell elements for geometric non‐linear analysis of elastic shells. To subdue shear, trapezoidal and thickness locking, the assumed natural strain method and an ad hoc modified generalized laminate stiffness matrix are employed. A selectively reduced integrated element is formulated with its membrane and bending shear strain components taken to be constant and equal to the ones evaluated at the element centroid. With the generalized stresses arising from the modified generalized laminate stiffness matrix assumed to be independent from the ones obtained from the displacement, an extended Hellinger–Reissner functional can be derived. By choosing the assumed generalized stresses similar to the assumed stresses of a previous solid element, a hybrid‐stress solid‐shell element is formulated. Commonly employed geometric non‐linear homogeneous and laminated shell problems are attempted and our results are close to those of other state‐of‐the‐art elements. Moreover, the hybrid‐stress element converges more readily than the selectively reduced integrated element in all benchmark problems. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new nine‐node solid‐shell finite element using complete 3D constitutive laws

The solid‐shell element presented in this paper has nine nodes: eight are classically located at the apexes and are fitted with three translational DOFs whereas the ninth is sited at the center and is endowed with only one DOF; a displacement along the ‘thickness’ direction. Indeed, to be used for modeling thin structures under bending effects, this kind of finite element has a favored direction where several integration points are distributed. Besides, there is solely one ‘in‐plane’ quadrature point to avoid locking phenomena and prohibitive CPU costs for large nonlinear computations. Because a reduced integration is not enough to completely prevent transverse shear locking, a shear–strain field is assumed. Compared with the other eight‐node ‘solid‐shell' bricks, the presence of a supplementary node has a main aim: getting a linear normal strain component which, along with a full three‐dimensional constitutive strain–stress behavior, allows to achieve similar results in bending cases as those obtained with the usual plane stress state hypothesis. For that, the ninth node DOF plays the role of an extra parameter essential for a quadratic interpolation of the displacement in the thickness direction. The advantage is that this DOF has a physical meaning and, for instance, a strength equivalent to a normal pressure can be prescribed. With a suitable nodal numbering, the band width is not significantly increased and meshes can easily be generated because the extra nodes are always located at element centers. To emphasize the peculiar features of such an element, a set of examples (linear and nonlinear) is carried out. Numerous comparisons with other elements show pretty good results in bending dominating problems while adding the event of a normal stress component in sheet metal forming simulations with double side contact. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A large deformation solid‐shell concept based on reduced integration with hourglass stabilization

In this paper a new eight‐node (brick) solid‐shell finite element formulation based on the concept of reduced integration with hourglass stabilization is presented. The work focuses on static problems. The starting point of the derivation is the three‐field variational functional upon which meanwhile established 3D enhanced strain concepts are based. Important additional assumptions are made to transfer the approach into a powerful solid‐shell. First of all, a Taylor expansion of the first Piola–Kirchhoff stress tensor with respect to the normal through the centre of the element is carried out. In this way the stress becomes a linear function of the shell surface co‐ordinates whereas the dependence on the thickness co‐ordinate remains non‐linear. Secondly, the Jacobian matrix is replaced by its value in the centre of the element. These two assumptions lead to a computationally efficient shell element which requires only two Gauss points in the thickness direction (and one Gauss point in the plane of the shell element). Additionally three internal element degrees‐of‐freedom have to be determined to avoid thickness locking. One important advantage of the element is the fact that a fully three‐dimensional stress state can be modelled without any modification of the constitutive law. The formulation has only displacement degrees‐of‐freedom and the geometry in the thickness direction is correctly displayed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A reduced integration solid‐shell finite element based on the EAS and the ANS concept—Large deformation problems

In this paper we address the extension of a recently proposed reduced integration eight‐node solid‐shell finite element to large deformations. The element requires only one integration point within the shell plane and at least two integration points over the thickness. The possibility to choose arbitrarily many Gauss points over the shell thickness enables a realistic and efficient modeling of the non‐linear material behavior. Only one enhanced degree‐of‐freedom is needed to avoid volumetric and Poisson thickness locking. One key point of the formulation is the Taylor expansion of the inverse Jacobian matrix with respect to the element center leading to a very accurate modeling of arbitrary element shapes. The transverse shear and curvature thickness locking are cured by means of the assumed natural strain concept. Further crucial points are the Taylor expansion of the compatible cartesian strain with respect to the center of the element as well as the Taylor expansion of the second Piola–Kirchhoff stress tensor with respect to the normal through the center of the element. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A refined non‐linear non‐conforming triangular plate/shell element

A refined non‐conforming triangular plate/shell element for geometric non‐linear analysis of plates/shells using the total Lagrangian/updated Lagrangian approach is constructed in this paper based on the refined non‐conforming element method for geometric non‐linear analysis. The Allman's triangular plane element with vertex degrees of freedom and the refined triangular plate‐bending element RT9 are used to construct the present element. Numerical examples demonstrate that the accuracy of the new element is quite high in the geometric non‐linear analysis of plates/shells. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.