Evaluation of some shear deformable shell elements

The objective of this paper is to evaluate a number of shell elements. At the same time, a new element is presented that is inspired by the quadrilateral heterosis element, Q8H, and is designated herein as the triangular heterosis element, T6H. Both elements employ the selectively reduced integration method. The elements investigated in this study include ABAQUS’s three general-purpose shell elements, ANSYS’s six-noded triangular element, T6, and the high-performance MITC9 element available in ADINA. The assessment is carried out by subjecting the various elements to several benchmark problems. It is found that for regular meshes, Q8H out-performs other elements and is comparable to MITC9. The performance of T6H is shown to be comparable to that of T6 in most test cases, but superior when very thin shells are considered.