Computers and Structures 223 (2019) 106096

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Computers and Structures

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compstruc

The strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell finite element

Chaemin Lee, Phill-Seung Lee ⇑
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, we propose the strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell finite element. The membrane strain field of
Received 18 October 2018 the continuum mechanics based 3-node triangular shell element (MITC3+) is smoothed using the
Accepted 8 July 2019 recently developed strain-smoothed element (SSE) method. The strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell element
Available online 9 August 2019
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
Keywords: additional degree of freedom is required for solution improvement.
3-node shell element
Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
MITC method
Membrane behavior
Strain smoothing
Strain-smoothed element (SSE) method

1. Introduction the same as that of the displacement-based 3-node triangular shell

elements. Using the interpolation cover enrichment, the
Shells are very effective structures that have been extensively membrane displacement fields were successfully improved, but 4
used in various engineering fields. For analysis of shell structures, additional degrees of freedom (DOFs) per node are required for
the finite element method (FEM) has been dominantly used for such improvements [26]. The enriched MITC3+ element has 27
several decades [1–4]. The behavior of a shell structure is very DOFs (15 standard DOFs + 12 enriched DOFs) in total. Therefore,
complicated and becomes sensitive, particularly when its thickness additional computational time is inevitably necessary. The use of
is small. The development of ideal shell finite elements is challeng- drilling DOFs is also very effective for enhancing the membrane
ing and attempts in creating ideal shell elements are still in behaviors of 3-node flat shell elements [30–35] and then 3
progress. Among various shell elements, 3-node triangular shell additional DOFs are also necessary.
elements have the obvious advantages of being simple and It is well known that strain smoothing methods like the edge-
efficient. Improving the performance of 3-node triangular shell based and node-based S-FEMs are very effective at alleviating the
elements is very important. overly stiff behavior of 2D and 3D solid finite elements [36–41].
Shell finite elements inherently have locking problems which The most important advantage of strain smoothing methods is that
happen when the finite element discretization cannot accurately accuracy improvement is achieved without additional DOFs. Strain
represent pure bending displacement fields. Locking seriously smoothing methods were also successfully employed for improv-
deteriorates solution accuracy as the shell thickness decreases in ing shell finite elements with drilling DOFs [35,42–45]. Recently,
bending-dominated shell problems [1–29]. There are various a new strain smoothing method, called the strain-smoothed
methods to alleviate locking such as reduced integration and element (SSE) method, has been developed for 3-node triangular
assumed strain methods [5–29]. Among those methods, the mixed and 4-node tetrahedral solid elements [46]. Its superior perfor-
interpolation of tensorial components (MITC) method was signifi- mance was shown compared to other strain smoothing methods.
cantly successful [13–29]. An interesting feature of the SSE method is that, unlike other strain
Adopting the MITC method for the continuum mechanics based smoothing methods, special smoothing domains are not required
3-node triangular shell finite element, the MITC3+ shell element and thus the method can be easily combined with the standard
was recently developed [23–25]. Its great performance has been finite element method.
demonstrated through various linear and nonlinear analyses. In this paper, we propose a strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell finite
However, the membrane behavior of the MITC3+ shell element is element in which the membrane behavior of the MITC3+ shell
finite element is improved by employing the SSE method, and thus
additional DOFs are unnecessary. The covariant strain fields of the
⇑ Corresponding author. MITC3+ shell element are decomposed into membrane, bending
E-mail address: [email protected] (P. S. Lee).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruc.2019.07.005
0045-7949/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 C. Lee, P.S. Lee / Computers and Structures 223 (2019) 106096

and transverse shear parts. The SSE method is applied only to the in which ui is the nodal displacement vector in the global Cartesian
membrane part. The strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell element passes coordinate system, Vi1 and Vi2 are unit vectors orthogonal to Vin and
patch, isotropy and zero energy mode tests. Convergence behavior to each other, and ai and bi are the rotations of the director vector
is improved in membrane-dominated and mixed bending- Vin about Vi1 and Vi2 , respectively, at node i. Note that the displace-
membrane problems while maintaining good convergence behav- ment interpolation has a linear variation along its edges.
ior in bending-dominated problems. The linear part of the displacement-based covariant strain com-
In the following sections, the formulation of the strain- ponents is obtained by
smoothed MITC3+ shell finite element is given. The performance
of the strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell finite element is illustrated 1
eij ¼ ðg  u;j þ gj  u;i Þ ð5Þ
through basic and several convergence tests. 2 i
and
2. The formulation of the shell finite element
@x @u
In this section, we review the formulation of the MITC3+ shell gi ¼ ; u;i ¼ with r 1 ¼ r; r 2 ¼ s; r 3 ¼ t; ð6Þ
@r i @r i
finite element, and present the formulation of the strain-
smoothed MITC3+ shell finite element. where gi and u;i are the covariant base vectors and the displacement
derivatives, respectively.
2.1. The MITC3+ shell finite element To alleviate transverse shear locking, the following assumed
covariant transverse shear strain fields with six tying points are
In the geometry and displacement interpolations, the MITC3+ employed for the MITC3+ shell element [23]
shell finite element has an internal bubble node at element center  
2 ðBÞ 1 ðBÞ 1  ðAÞ ðAÞ
 1
(r ¼ s ¼ 1=3) that only has two rotational degrees of freedom with MITC3þ
e13 ¼ e13  e23 þ e13 þ e23 þ ^cð3s  1Þ; ð7Þ
a cubic bubble function. 3 2 3 3
The geometry of the MITC3+ shell finite element, shown in  
Fig. 1, is interpolated by [23] 2 ðCÞ 1 ðCÞ 1  ðAÞ ðAÞ
 1
MITC3þ
e23 ¼ e23  e13 þ e13 þ e23 þ ^cð1  3rÞ; ð8Þ
3 2 3 3
X
3
t X4
xðr; s; tÞ ¼ hi ðr; sÞxi þ ai f i ðr; sÞVin ð1Þ ðFÞ ðDÞ ðFÞ ðEÞ
i¼1
2 i¼1 where ^c ¼ e13  e13  e23 þ e23 and the tying points (A)-(F) are
given in Fig. 2 and Table 1.
with
In order to calculate the stiffness matrix, in principle, the
1  7-point Gauss integration should be used in the r  s plane, but
h1 ¼ 1  r  s; h2 ¼ r; h3 ¼ s; a4 V4n ¼ a1 V1n þ a2 V2n þ a3 V3n ;
3 the 3-point Gauss integration also gives similar results. For this
ð2Þ study, the 3-point Gauss integration is adopted. Note that in the
MITC3+ shell element, membrane locking is not treated due to its
where hi ðr; sÞ is the 2D interpolation function of the standard flat geometry.
isoparametric procedure corresponding to node i, xi is the position The MITC3+ shell finite element passes all the basic tests: zero
vector of node i in the global Cartesian coordinate system, ai and Vin energy mode, isotropy and patch tests, and shows excellent
are the shell thickness and the director vector at node i, respec-
tively, and f i ðr; sÞ is the 2D interpolation function with the cubic
bubble function f 4 corresponding to internal node 4:
1 1 1
f 1 ¼ h1  f 4 ; f 2 ¼ h2  f 4 ; f 3 ¼ h3  f 4 ; f 4 ¼ 27rsð1  r  sÞ:
3 3 3
ð3Þ
The displacement interpolation of the element is given by
X
3
t X4  
uðr; s; tÞ ¼ hi ðr; sÞui þ ai f i ðr; sÞ ai Vi2 þ bi Vi1 ; ð4Þ
i¼1
2 i¼1

Fig. 2. Tying points (A)–(F) for the assumed transverse shear strain fields of the
MITC3+ shell element. The points (A)–(C) also correspond to Gauss integration
points.

Table 1
Tying points (A)–(F) for the assumed transverse shear strain fields of the MITC3+ shell
element. The distance d is defined in Fig. 2, and d = 1/10000 is recommended [23].

Tying points r s
Fig. 2(a) (A) 1/6 1/6
(B) 2/3 1/6
(C) 1/6 2/3
Fig. 2(b) (D) 1/3 + d 1/3  2d
(E) 1/3  2d 1/3 + d
(F) 1/3 + d 1/3 + d
Fig. 1. Geometry of the MITC3+ shell finite element.
 C. Lee, P.S. Lee / Computers and Structures 223 (2019) 106096 3

Fig. 3. Application of the strain-smoothed element method to the MITC3+ shell element: (a) Finite element discretization of a shell. A target element and its neighboring
elements are colored. (b) Coordinate systems for strain smoothing in shell elements. (c) Strain smoothing between the target element and each neighboring element. (d)
Construction of the smoothed strain field through three Gauss points.

convergence behaviors in both linear and nonlinear analyses of

various shell problems [23,24].

2.2. The strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell finite element

The covariant in-plane strain components in Eq. (5) can be

decomposed as follows

eij ¼ m eij þ t b1 eij þ t 2 b2

eij with i; j ¼ 1; 2; ð9Þ

Table 2
List of the shell elements used for comparison.

Element Description
Allman A flat shell element that combines a triangular membrane
element with Allman’s drilling DOFs and the discrete
Kirchhoff-Mindlin triangular (DKMT) plate element. It Fig. 4. Cook’s skew beam problem and two 4  4 mesh patterns.
requires 18 DOFs for an element [30,33,35]
ANDES A flat shell element that combines the assumed natural
(OPT) deviatoric strain (ANDES) triangular membrane element with
3 drilling DOFs and optimal parameters and the DKMT plate Table 3
element. It has 18 DOFs for an element [31–33,35] Normalized vertical displacements (v =v ref ) at point A in the Cook’s skew beam
Shin and Lee As a flat shell element, the edge-based strain smoothing problem.
method is applied to the ANDES formulation-based
membrane element with 3 drilling DOFs, and the DKMT plate Element DOFs per Mesh
element is combined. New values of the free parameters in the element
22 44 88 16  16
ANDES formulation are introduced. It requires 18 DOFs for an
element [35] Mesh I Allman 18 0.8212 0.9358 0.9792 0.9939
MITC3+ A continuum mechanics based 3-node shell element with a ANDES (OPT) 18 0.8584 0.9373 0.9782 0.9937
bubble node. The bubble node has 2 rotational DOFs which Shin and Lee 18 0.7945 0.9640 0.9946 0.9992
can be condensed out on the element level. It has 15 DOFs for MITC3+ 15 0.5007 0.7634 0.9195 0.9775
an element [23,29] Enriched MITC3+ 27 0.9531 0.9871 0.9962 
Enriched The MITC3 + shell element enriched in membrane Smoothed MITC3+ 15 0.8828 1.0048 1.0057 1.0021
MITC3+ displacements by interpolation covers. 4 DOFs per node are Mesh II MITC3+ 15 0.2815 0.4698 0.7236 0.9016
added and thus the element has 27 DOFs for an element in Enriched MITC3+ 27 0.8393 0.9611 0.9916 –
total [26] Smoothed MITC3+ 15 0.5154 0.8873 0.9830 0.9968
MITC4+ The continuum mechanics based 4-node MITC shell element MITC4+ 20 0.7271 0.9106 0.9744 0.9933
with membrane locking treatment. It has 20 DOFs for an
Reference solution: v ref ¼23.95 [3]
element [28,29]
4 C. Lee, P.S. Lee / Computers and Structures 223 (2019) 106096

 
1 @xm @um @xm @um
m
eij ¼  þ  ; ð10Þ
2 @r i @r j @r j @r i
 
1 @xm @ub @xm @ub @xb @um @xb @um
b1
eij ¼  þ  þ  þ  ; ð11Þ
2 @r i @rj @r j @r i @r i @rj @r j @r i
 
1 @xb @ub @xb @ub
b2
eij ¼  þ  ð12Þ
2 @ri @r j @r j @r i
with
X
3
1X 4
xm ðr; sÞ ¼ hi ðr; sÞxi ; xb ðr; sÞ ¼ ai f i ðr; sÞVin ; ð13Þ
i¼1
2 i¼1

X
3
um ðr; sÞ ¼ hi ðr; sÞui ;
i¼1

1X 4
ub ðr; sÞ ¼ ai f i ðr; sÞðai Vi2 þ bi Vi1 Þ; ð14Þ
2 i¼1

in which m eij is the covariant membrane strain, and b1 eij and b2 eij are
the covariant bending strains [27,28].
A triangular element can have up to three neighboring elements
through its edges. In order to employ the strain-smoothed element
(SSE) method, a target element and its three neighboring elements
as shown in Fig. 3(a) are considered. In shell finite element models,
the target and neighboring elements are not placed in the same
plane in general. For additive operations in the strain smoothing
procedure, the base coordinate systems of strains of the target
and neighboring elements must be matched.
ðeÞ
The covariant membrane strains of the target element ( m eln )
th ðkÞ
and of the k neighboring element ( m eln )
are calculated at element
centers (r ¼ s ¼ 1=3 and t ¼ 0) using Eq. (10). The covariant mem-
brane strain of the neighboring element is then transformed into
the convected coordinates defined at the center of the target
element using the following relation:

m ðkÞ ðkÞ
eij ¼ m eln ð ðeÞ gi  ðkÞ l
g Þð ðeÞ gj  ðkÞ n
g Þ with i; j; l; n ¼ 1; 2; ð15Þ

where ðeÞ gi and ðkÞ gl are the covariant base vectors of the target
Fig. 5. Normalized vertical displacements at point A in the Cook’s skew beam element and the contravariant base vectors of the kth neighbor-
problem: (a) and (b) are the results for Mesh I and Mesh II, respectively. ing element, respectively, as seen in Fig. 3(b). In Eq. (15), the

Fig. 6. Convergence curves for the Cook’s skew beam problem when Mesh II is used. The bold line represents the optimal convergence rate.
 C. Lee, P.S. Lee / Computers and Structures 223 (2019) 106096 5

contravariant base vectors are calculated using the covariant base where p ¼ 1=6 and q ¼ 2=3 are constants indicating the positions of
vectors in Eq. (6) and ðkÞ gi  ðkÞ gj ¼ dji . Note that, in this strain trans- the Gauss points. Note that Eq. (19) is not utilized in actual compu-
formation, the effect of out-of-plane strains is simply neglected. tation of the stiffness matrix. We use the assigned strains in Eq. (18)
The smoothed membrane strain between the target element directly in the 3-point Gauss integration.
and the kth neighboring element is calculated by [46] The smoothed covariant membrane strain m esmoothed
ij in Eq. (19)
replaces the covariant membrane strain m eij in Eq. (10). We use
m ^ðkÞ 1 ðeÞ ðkÞ 
eij ¼  ð m eij AðeÞ þ m eij AðkÞ Þ with i; j ¼ 1; 2; ð16Þ the originally defined b1 eij and b2 eij in Eqs. (11) and (12) for the
ðeÞ
A þ AðkÞ
covariant bending strains. For the covariant transverse shear
 strains, we adopt the assumed strains of the MITC3+ shell element,
AðkÞ ¼ ðnðeÞ  nðkÞ ÞAðkÞ ; nðeÞ ¼ ðeÞ
g3 =jj ðeÞ g3 jj; nðkÞ ¼ ðkÞ
g3 =jj ðkÞ g3 jj; eMITC3þ in Eqs. (7) and (8).
i3
ð17Þ In Eqs. (16) and (17), we use the projected element areas and
ðeÞ ðkÞ thus the effect of membrane strain smoothing depends on the
where A and A are the mid-surface areas (t ¼ 0) of the target
angle between the target and neighboring elements (marked with
and the kth neighboring elements, respectively, nðeÞ and nðkÞ are h in Fig. 3b). As the angle approached 90 degrees, the smoothing
the unit normal vectors defined at the centers of the target and effect gradually vanishes. This is a desirable feature.
ðkÞ
neighboring elements, respectively, and A is the area obtained
by projecting AðkÞ into the mid-surface plane of the target element,
ðkÞ m ðeÞ
see Fig. 3(c). Note that we use m ^eij ¼ eij if the kth edge of the tar-
get element is located along boundary.
Then, the membrane strains obtained through Eq. (16) are
assigned at three Gauss points using the following equations,
shown in Fig. 3(d)

m ðAÞ 1 m ð3Þ m ð1Þ m ðBÞ 1 m ð1Þ m ð2Þ

eij ¼ ð ^eij þ ^eij Þ; eij ¼ ð ^eij þ ^eij Þ;
2 2
m ðCÞ 1 m ð2Þ m ð3Þ
eij ¼ ð ^eij þ ^eij Þ with i; j ¼ 1; 2: ð18Þ
2
It is very interesting that the covariant membrane strain field
within the element can be explicitly expressed in a form of
assumed strain
 
1 ðAÞ r  p m ðBÞ
m smoothed
eij ¼ 1 ðr þ s  2pÞ m eij þ e
qp q  p ij
s  p m ðCÞ
þ e with i; j ¼ 1; 2; ð19Þ
q  p ij Fig. 8. Normalized vertical displacements at point D in the partially clamped
hyperbolic paraboloid shell problem.

Fig. 7. Partially clamped hyperbolic paraboloid shell problem (4  8 mesh).

Fig. 9. Scordelis-Lo roof shell problem and two 4  4 mesh patterns.

Table 4
Normalized vertical displacements (w=wref ) at point D in the partially clamped Table 5  
hyperbolic paraboloid shell problem. Relative errors (%) in von Mises stress obtained by rref  rh =rref  100 at point B in
the Scordelis-Lo roof shell problem when t=L ¼ 1=100.
Element DOFs per Mesh
element Element DOFs per Mesh
24 48 8  16 16  32 24  48 element
88 16  16 32  32
Allman 18 0.1364 0.0656 0.2866 0.7729 0.8899
ANDES (OPT) 18 0.0067 0.0598 0.4150 0.8521 0.9111 Mesh I MITC3+ 15 45.56 22.52 10.66
Shin and Lee 18 1.1512 1.0093 0.9457 0.9310 0.9315 Smoothed MITC3+ 15 24.76 13.30 6.99
MITC3+ 15 1.0552 0.9541 0.9597 0.9736 0.9823 Mesh II MITC3+ 15 13.94 3.51 0.96
Smoothed MITC3+ 15 1.0581 0.9856 0.9858 0.9909 0.9943 Smoothed MITC3+ 15 0.96 1.16 0.85

Reference solution: wref ¼6:3905  103 Reference solution: rref ¼3:0306  105
6 C. Lee, P.S. Lee / Computers and Structures 223 (2019) 106096

When the angle is smaller than 90 degrees or more than two shell geometry and material properties vary smoothly. These are
shell elements are connected through shared edges, the use of also the limitations of most strain smoothing techniques.
strain smoothing is not recommended. The strain smoothing is also Note that there is an alternative approach to obtain smoothed
not suitable along the boundary where material properties change membrane strains between the target and neighboring shell
rapidly. In other words, the strain smoothing is effective, when elements, see Ref. [35]. It is also valuable to note that there is an

Fig. 10. von-Mises stress distributions for the Scordelis-Lo roof shell problem when t=L ¼ 1=100 and Mesh I is used for the MITC3+ shell element and the strain-smoothed
MITC3+ shell element.
 C. Lee, P.S. Lee / Computers and Structures 223 (2019) 106096 7

interesting approach to improving stress solutions with the help of It has a uniform thickness t ¼ 1=1000, and a self-weight loading
adjacent elements, see Ref. [47]. f z ¼ 8 per unit area is acting on the shell. Material properties given
are E ¼ 2  1011 and m ¼ 0:3. One end of the shell is clamped, and
3. Convergence studies
Table 6
In the following sections, we investigate the performance of the Normalized vertical displacements (w=wref ) at point B in the Scordelis-Lo roof shell
proposed strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell element using several problem when t=L ¼ 1=100.
appropriate benchmark problems: Cook’s skew beam, partially Element DOFs per Mesh
clamped hyperbolic paraboloid shell, Scordelis-Lo roof shell, and element
44 88 16  16
clamped/free hyperboloid shell problems. The proposed element
passes all the basic tests: patch, isotropy and zero energy mode Mesh I Allman 18 1.0046 0.9874 
ANDES (OPT) 18 1.0830 1.0139 
tests [1,24,48,49]. A list of previously developed shell elements
Shin and Lee 18 1.0231 1.0043 
used for comparison is given in Table 2 with brief descriptions MITC3+ 15 0.7409 0.8793 0.9618
[23–33,35]. Enriched MITC3+ 27 0.9610 0.9931 0.9983
For convergence studies, we use displacement or stress values Smoothed MITC3+ 15 1.1017 1.0323 1.0075
Mesh II MITC3+ 15 0.6744 0.8606 0.9566
at a specific location. We also use the s-norm defined by [17,22]
Enriched MITC3+ 27 0.8922 0.9762 0.9950
Z
Smoothed MITC3+ 15 0.9649 0.9986 0.9998
jjuref  uh jj2s ¼ DeT DsdX with De ¼ eref  eh ; Ds ¼ sref  sh ; MITC4+ 20 1.0476 1.0053 0.9977
X
Reference solution: wref ¼0:3024 [4,16]
ð20Þ
where uref is the reference solution, uh is the solution of the finite
element discretization, e is the strain vector and s is the stress
vector.
To consider various shell thicknesses, we use the relative error
Eh

jjuref  uh jj2s
Eh ¼ : ð21Þ
jjuref jj2s
The optimal convergence behavior of the 3-node triangular
shell finite elements with linear interpolation is given by
2
Eh ffi ch ; ð22Þ
where h is the element size, and c is a constant [1].
In this study, the MITC9 shell element is used to obtain refer-
ence solutions. The MITC9 shell element satisfies the consistency
and ellipticity conditions, and gives well-converged solutions [18].

3.1. Cook’s skew beam problem

Let us consider the Cook’s skew beam problem [3] shown in

Fig. 4. The skew cantilever beam with unit thickness is subjected
to a distributed shearing force p ¼ 1=16 per unit length at its right
end, and the clamped boundary condition is given at the left end.
Plane stress condition is assumed, Young’s modulus is E ¼ 1, and
Poisson’s ratio is m ¼ 1=3. We use N  N meshes with N ¼2, 4, 8,
16 and 32. Two patterns of meshes (Mesh I and Mesh II) are used
as shown in Fig. 4.
Normalized vertical displacements at point A are given in
Table 3 and Fig. 5 for both mesh patterns. The s-norm convergence
curves of the MITC3+ shell element, the enriched MITC3+ shell ele-
ment and the strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell element for Mesh II
are given in Fig. 6. The reference solutions used for s-norm are
obtained using a 64  64 mesh of MITC9 shell finite elements,
and the element size is h ¼ 1=N. This example is purely for compar-
ing membrane performance, and the strain-smoothed MITC3
+ shell element offers very accurate solutions comparable to the
enriched MITC3+ shell element.

3.2. Partially clamped hyperbolic paraboloid shell problem

The hyperbolic paraboloid shell problem [15] shown in Fig. 7 is

also considered. The mid-surface of the shell is given by Fig. 11. Normalized vertical displacements at point B in the Scordelis-Lo roof shell
problem when t=L ¼ 1=100: (a) and (b) are the results for Mesh I and Mesh II,
z ¼ y  x ; x; y 2 ½1=2; 1=2:
2 2
ð23Þ respectively.
8 C. Lee, P.S. Lee / Computers and Structures 223 (2019) 106096

due to its symmetry, we model only one-half of the structure with

the following boundary conditions: ux ¼ b ¼ 0 along CD and
ux ¼ uy ¼ uz ¼ a ¼ b ¼ 0 along AC. We use N  2N meshes with
N ¼2, 4, 8, 16 and 24.
Table 4 and Fig. 8 show normalized vertical displacements at
point D. The reference solutions are obtained using a 32  64 mesh
of MITC9 shell finite elements. Among the various shell elements
considered, the proposed element shows the best solution
accuracy.

3.3. Scordelis-Lo roof shell problem

The third example is the Scordelis-Lo roof shell problem [4,16]

shown in Fig. 9. The shell is a part of a cylinder with length L ¼ 25,
radius R ¼ 25, and uniform thickness t. It is subjected to a self-
weight loading f z ¼ 90 per unit area. Young’s modulus is
E ¼ 4:32  108 and Poisson’s ratio is m ¼ 0.
The shell structure is supported by rigid diaphragms at both
ends. Due to symmetry, one-quarter of the structure is considered
with the following boundary conditions: ux ¼ uz ¼ 0 along AC,
uy ¼ a ¼ 0 along BD and ux ¼ b ¼ 0 along CD. Under these condi- Fig. 13. The total number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) when increasing the
tions, a mixed bending-membrane behavior occurs in the struc- number of element layers N.

ture. Two mesh patterns (Mesh I and Mesh II) are used, as shown
in Fig. 9. The solutions are obtained with N  N element meshes
(N ¼4, 8, 16 and 32).
Table 5 gives relative errors in von-Mises stress at point B (for
both mesh patterns with t=L ¼ 1=100), and Fig. 10 shows the Table 7
von-Mises stress distributions (for Mesh I with t=L ¼ 1=100). Computation time (in seconds) for the Scordelis-Lo roof shell problem.
Table 6 and Fig. 11 show convergences in the vertical displacement
Mesh Element Computation time (s)
at point B (for both mesh patterns with t=L ¼ 1=100). Fig. 12 shows
the s-norm convergence curves of the MITC3+ shell element, the Constructing Solving linear Total
stiffness matrices equations
enriched MITC3+ shell element and the strain-smoothed MITC3
+ shell element (for Mesh II with three different thickness to length 16  16 MITC3+ 0.022 0.003 0.025
Enriched MITC3+ 0.060 0.013 0.073
ratios: t=L ¼1/100, 1/1000 and 1/10000). The reference solutions
Smoothed MITC3+ 0.024 0.007 0.031
are obtained using a 64  64 mesh of MITC9 shell finite elements. 32  32 MITC3+ 0.087 0.033 0.120
The element size is h ¼ 1=N. The strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell Enriched MITC3+ 0.244 0.174 0.418
finite element gives significantly improved solutions comparable Smoothed MITC3+ 0.103 0.105 0.207
64  64 MITC3+ 0.369 0.449 0.818
to the enriched MITC3+ shell element.
Enriched MITC3+ 1.005 2.244 3.249
Fig. 13 shows how the total number of DOFs increases when Smoothed MITC3+ 0.437 1.333 1.770
increasing the number of element layers N. Table 7 shows the

Fig. 12. Convergence curves for the Scordelis-Lo roof shell problem when Mesh II is used. The bold line represents the optimal convergence rate.
 C. Lee, P.S. Lee / Computers and Structures 223 (2019) 106096 9

measured computation time for the MITC3+, enriched MITC3+ and

smoothed MITC3+ shell elements. It includes all the time from con-
structing stiffness matrices to solving linear equations. We use a
symmetric skyline solver, and the computations are performed
using a PC with Intel Core i7-6700, 3.40 GHz CPU and 64 GB
RAM. The strain-smoothed MITC3+ shell element requires less
computation time than the enriched MITC3+ shell element, provid-
ing similarly accurate solutions.

3.4. Hyperboloid shell problems

We lastly consider the hyperboloid shell problems [23] shown

in Fig. 14. The mid-surface geometry of the shell structure with
uniform thickness t is given by

Fig. 14. Hyperboloid shell problem (4  4 mesh). x2 þ z2 ¼ 1 þ y2 ; y 2 ½1; 1: ð24Þ

Fig. 15. Convergence curves for the clamped hyperboloid shell problem. The bold line represents the optimal convergence rate.

Fig. 16. Convergence curves for the free hyperboloid shell problem. The bold line represents the optimal convergence rate.
10 C. Lee, P.S. Lee / Computers and Structures 223 (2019) 106096

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