Mixed-interpolated elements for thin shells

The subject of this work is the construction of some special finite elements for the numerical solution of Naghdi cylindrical shell problems. The standard numerical approximation of the shell problem is subjected to the shear and membrane locking phenomenon, i.e. the numerical solution degenerates for low thickness. The most common way to avoid locking is the use of modified bilinear forms to describe the shear and membrane energy of the shell. In this paper we build a family of special finite elements that still follow the above strategy by introducing a linear operator that reduces the influence both of the shear and membrane energy terms. The main idea comes from the non-standard mixed interpolated tensorial components (MITC) formulation for Reissner-Mindlin plates. The performance of the new elements is then tested for solving benchmark problems involving very thin shells. The results show both the properties of convergence and robustness.