A finite element formulation for the analysis of laminated composite shells

An improved finite element model for the linear analysis of anisotropic and laminated doubly curved, moderately thick composite shells/shell-panels is presented. The first order shear deformation shell theory is used as a basis for the development of proposed finite element model. The Mixed Interpolation of Tensorial Components (MITC) approach is adopted to overcome the effects of shear and membrane locking on the predicted structural response. Special attention is paid to the spherical shell-panels which are rectangular in plan. The extensional and flexural stresses are regularized by least square smoothing technique. The out-of-plane stress profiles are recovered from the 3-D equilibrium equations. The results are compared with the available analytical and numerical solutions and the agreement between them is found to be excellent in both the cases of shallow and deep shells. The performance of the proposed element is also illustrated with numerical examples. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.