Anisotropic cylindrical shell element based on discrete Kirchhoff theory

Abstract

Abstract A triangular cylindrical shell element based on discrete Kirchhoff theory is developed. It is a three‐node, 27‐degrees‐of‐freedom element using cubic polynomials for the tangential and normal displacement interpolations. The normal rotations are independently interpolated by quadratic polynomials. The formulation is capable of modelling general anisotropy representative of multi‐layered, multi‐directionally oriented composite construction. The numerical results indicate that the solution for displacements and stresses of cylindrical shells converge monotonically and rapidly to those based on deep shell theory.