A four-node degenerated shell element with drilling degrees of freedom

A new four-node degenerated shell element with drilling degrees of freedom (DOF) is proposed. Allman-type displacement approximation is incorporated into the formulation of degenerated shell elements. The approximation improves in-plane performance and eliminates singularities of system matrices resulted from DOF deficiency. Transverse shear locking is circumvented by introducing assumed covariant shear strains. Two kinds of penalty energy are considered in the formulation for the purpose of suppressing spurious modes and representing true drilling rotations. The proposed element can be applied to almost all kinds of shell problems including composite laminated shell structures and folded shell structures. Numerical examples show that the element is of good accuracy and of reasonably fast convergence rate.