An efficient 4‐node 24 D.O.F. thick shell finite element with 5‐point quadrature

A 4‐node flat shell quadrilateral finite element with 6 degrees of freedom per node, denoted QC5D‐SA, is presented. The element is an assembly of a modification of the drilling degree of freedom membrane presented by Ibrahimbegovic et al., and the assumed strain plate element presented by Bathe and Dvorkin. The part of the stiffness matrix associated with in—plane displacements and rotations is integrated over the element domain by a modified 5‐point reduced integration scheme, resulting in greater efficiency without the sacrifice of rank sufficiency. The scheme produces a soft higher order deformation mode which increases numerical accuracy. A large number of standard benchmark problems are analyzed. Some examples show that the effectiveness of a previously proposed “membrane locking correction” technique is significantly reduced when employing distorted elements. However, the element is shown to be generally accurate and in many cases superior to existing elements.

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