The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

A Refined Finite Element Analysis of Thin Shells Including Dynamic Loadings

Carr, Athol J.

UCB/SESM-1967/09, Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1967-06, 224 pages (555/C266/1967)

This early study in finite element analysis of thin shells develops a refined triangular finite element suitable for shell analysis in the sense that it possesses all three translational and rotational degrees of freedom at each nodal point, a refined plane stress finite element with a quadratic variation of strain is combined with a fully compatible plate bending finite element. The resulting shell finite element has a cubic displacement pattern and is capable of undergoing the general transformation of axes required in the direct stiffness method of structural analysis. The concept is extended to obtain the dynamic properties of a general shell structure and techniques are developed to obtain the response of a shell roof structure to an arbitrary ground acceleration history.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/SEMM/SEMM-67-09.pdf (22 MB)