| Abstract: | A refined axisymmetric curved finite element for the analysis of thin elastic-plastic shells of revolution is described in the paper. The improved element is obtained by employing cubic polynomials in terms of local Cartesian co-ordinates for the assumed in-plane and out-of-plane displacements. This introduces into the solution two internal degrees of freedom in the cord direction of each element. These internal degrees of freedom are removed by static condensation before assembling the individual element stiffness matrices, and are subsequently recovered after the nodal displacements are obtained. On comparison with the previous formulation, this procedure greatly improves the accuracy of the solution especially with regards to in-plane stress-resultants at discontinuities in the meridional curvature and interelement equilibrium of forces. The latter fact makes it possible to analyse shells with a discontinuous meridional slope. In using this element, improvement in the convergence of the elastic-plastic solutions has also been observed. Several examples illustrate the quality of solutions. The reported study is limited to axisymmetric loadings cum boundary conditions. |
