Non-linear behaviour of the RFNS element––large displacements and rotations Original Research Article

The reformulated four-node shell element has been shown to exhibit an excellent behaviour with respect to a well-known set of benchmark tests for shell elements. Recently the performance of the RFNS element was re-confirmed in terms of its asymptotic behaviour by means of classical and new limit tests. In the present paper, the RFNS formulation is extended to incorporate geometric non-linear behaviour. The total Lagrangian formulation is employed. The RFNS element non-linear formulation allows for large displacements and large rotations. An efficient performance of the non-linear RFNS element formulation is confirmed for the applications investigated.