An Efficient Strain Based Cylindrical Shell Finite Element

The need for compatibility between degrees of freedom of various elements is a major problem encountered in practice during the modeling of complex structures; the problem is generally solved by an additional rotational degree of freedom [1-3]. This present paper investigates possible improvements to the performances of strain based cylindrical shell finite element [4] by introducing an additional rotational degree of freedom. The resulting element has 24 degrees of freedom, six essential external degrees of freedom at each of the four nodes and thus, avoiding the difficulties associated with internal degrees of freedom (the three translations and three rotations) and the displacement functions of the developed element satisfy the exact representation of the rigid body motion and constant strains (in so far as this allowed by compatibility equations). Numerical experiments analysis have been conducted to assess accuracy and reliability of the present element, this resulting element with the added degree of freedom is found to be numerically more efficient in practical problems than the corresponding Ashwell element [4].