Non-linear strain–displacement equations exactly representing large rigid-body motions. Part III. Analysis of TM shells with constraints Original Research Article

The precise representation of arbitrarily large rigid-body motions in the displacement patterns of curved Timoshenko–Mindlin-type (TM) shell elements has been considered in Part I of the present work. In Part II it has been developed an enhanced mixed finite element formulation that allows using load increments that are much larger than possible with existing geometrically exact displacement-based shell element formulations. In this paper the developed formulation is employed to solve frictionless contact problems for TM shells undergoing finite deformations and interacting with rigid bodies. The contact conditions are incorporated into the assumed stress–strain TM shell formulation by applying a perturbed Lagrangian procedure with the fundamental unknowns consisting of 6 displacements and 11 strains of the bottom and top surfaces of the shell, 11 conjugate stress resultants and the Lagrange multiplier, associated with a nodal contact force, through using the non-conventional technique. The efficiency and accuracy of the proposed finite element formulation are demonstrated by means of several numerical examples.