Computers & Structures | 2019
The strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell finite element
Abstract
Abstract In this paper, we propose the strain-smoothed MITC3+\u202fshell finite element. The membrane strain field of the continuum mechanics based 3-node triangular shell element (MITC3+) is smoothed using the recently developed strain-smoothed element (SSE) method. The strain-smoothed MITC3+\u202fshell element passes basic tests (patch, isotropy and zero energy mode tests) and shows significantly improved membrane behavior in various numerical examples. The major advantage of the SSE method is that no additional degree of freedom is required for solution improvement.