A corotational mixed flat shell finite element for the efficient geometrically nonlinear analysis of laminated composite structures

A corotational flat shell element for the geometrically nonlinear analysis of laminated composite structures is presented. The element is obtained from the Hellinger–Reissner variational principle with assumed stress and displacement fields. The stress interpolation is derived from the linear elastic solution for symmetric composite materials. The element is isostatic, namely the stress interpolation is ruled by the minimum number of parameters. Displacement and rotation fields are only assumed along the contour of the element. As such, all the operators are efficiently obtained through analytical contour integration. The geometrical nonlinearity is introduced by means of a corotational formulation. The proposed finite element, named MISS-4c, proves to be locking free and shows no rank defectiveness. A multimodal Koiter's algorithm is used to obtain the initial postbuckling response. Results show good accuracy and high convergence rate in the geometrically nonlinear analysis of composite shell structures.