Spline shell element and plane-wave approximation for dynamic response of submerged structures

This paper presents a performance study on the plane-wave approximation for dynamic responses of shell structures using spline finite elements, in par ticular, the interaction between submerged shell structures and the surroun ding infinite fluid. The shell structures are discretized by using quadrila teral spline shell elements. The element is doubly curved. Each element con sists of nine primary nodes and eight auxiliary nodes, and has a total of 6 3 degrees of freedom. The inter-element is C-1 continuous. A non-reflecting boundary based on acoustic approximations is used to model the infinite fl uid medium. Two examples are presented. Results demonstrated good performan ce. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.