AN IMPROVED AREA-COORDINATE BASED QUADRILATERAL SHELL ELEMENT IN DYNAMIC EXPLICIT FEA

An area-coordinate quadrilateral shell element in dynamic explicit finite element analysis is proposed with a modified interpolation function based on area coordinates, Mindlin shell theory and co-rotational formulations. The element is applied to and verified to have a good performance through comparison with experimental data and results from Belytschko-Tsay element. Computation precision is improved while the efficiency is kept.