Hierarchic isogeometric large rotation shell elements including linearized transverse shear parametrization

Abstract Two novel hierarchic finite element formulations for geometrically nonlinear shell analysis including the effects of transverse shear are presented. Both methods combine a fully nonlinear Kirchhoff–Love shell model with hierarchically added linearized transverse shear components. Thus, large rotations can be taken into account while circumventing the peculiar task of finding a corresponding parametrization of the rotation tensor. The two formulations differ in the way the transverse shear effects are included, either using hierarchic rotations or hierarchic displacements. The underlying assertion is that in most practical applications the transverse shear angles are small even for large deformations. This is confirmed by various numerical experiments. The hierarchic construction results in an additive strain decomposition into parts resulting from membrane and bending deformation and additional contributions from transverse shear. It requires at least C 1 -continuous shape functions, which can be easily established within the isogeometric context using spline based finite elements. As reported earlier, this concept is intrinsically free from transverse shear locking. In the nonlinear case it dramatically facilitates representation of large rotations in shell analysis.