Analysis of thin composite structures using an efficient hex-shell finite element

Seddik Shiri (1) , Hakim Naceur (2)

1 I2M - Institut de Mécanique et d'Ingénierie de Bordeaux
2 LAMIH - Laboratoire d'Automatique, de Mécanique et d'Informatique industrielles et Humaines - UMR 8201

In this paper a general methodology for the modeling of material composite multilayered shell structures is proposed using a Hex-shell finite element modeling. The first part of the paper is devoted to the general FE formulation of the present composite 8-node Hex-shell element called SCH8, based only on displacement degrees of freedom. A particular attention is given to alleviate shear, trapezoidal and thickness locking, without resorting to the classical plane-stress assumption. The anisotropic material behavior of layered shells is modeled using a fully three dimensional elastic orthotropic material law in each layer, including the thickness stress component. Applications to laminate thick shell structures are studied to validate the methodology, and good results have been obtained in comparison with ABAQUS© commercial code

Mots clés: "Composite structures"; "Finite element"; "Hex-shell"; "Homogenization"; "Numerical locking"

Domaines: Mécanique [physics.med-ph]

Seddik Shiri, Hakim Naceur. Analysis of thin composite structures using an efficient hex-shell finite element. Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology, 2013, 27 (12), pp.3755-3763. ⟨10.1007/s12206-013-0920-2⟩. ⟨hal-03624959⟩