Testing of Shell Elements using Challenging Benchmark Problems

Tjong, Wong Foek (2013) Testing of Shell Elements using Challenging Benchmark Problems. In: The 2nd Indonesian Structural Engineering and Materials Symposium, 07-11-2013 - 08-11-2013, Bandung - Indonesia.

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Abstract

This paper presents the author’s experiences with testing the accuracy and convergence capability of the shell elements available in commercial software SAP2000 Ver. 11.0.0 and a variant of shell element developed by the author, namely the Kriging-based curved triangular shell element (K-Shell). A set of shell benchmark problems were utilized in the tests and two of them were selected here due to its difficulty in achieving a converged solution, i.e. the pinched cylinder with end diaphragms and the Raasch challenge problem. The performance of SAP2000 and the K-Shell elements were highlighted and compared to several shell elements from literature. The results showed that the convergence of the elements was relatively slow in the pinched cylinder problem and different shell elements converged to slightly different values in the Raasch challenge problem. The lesson learned is that a user of commercial finite element software must be cautious regarding the accuracy of the computational results when using shell elements. For SAP2000 users using its shell elements, the use of a very fine mesh of the quadrilateral shell elements are recommended in engineering practice. The performance of the K-Shell can be improved if its formulation could eliminate the shear and membrane locking. Future research for the K-Shell, therefore, should be directed on developing a locking-free K-Shell.

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