An isogeometric solid-like shell element for nonlinear analysis

An isogeometric solid-like shell formulation is proposed in which B-spline basis functions are used to construct the mid-surface of the shell. In combination with a linear Lagrange shape function in the thickness direction, this yields a complete three-dimensional representation of the shell. The proposed shell element is implemented in a standard finite element code using Bezier extraction. The formulation is verified using different benchmark tests. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.