E. Madenci et A. Barut, A FREE-FORMULATION-BASED FLAT SHELL ELEMENT FOR NONLINEAR-ANALYSIS OFTHIN COMPOSITE STRUCTURES, International journal for numerical methods in engineering, 37(22), 1994, pp. 3825-3842
A flat shell element based on the free-formulation finite element conc
ept is developed for analysing geometrically non-linear thin composite
shells. A corotational form of the updated Lagrangian formulation is
utilized. Numerical results for typical validation problems are presen
ted in order to demonstrate the accuracy and validity of this element.
These results are obtained by solving the incremental equilibrium equ
ations through the cylindrical are-length method.