Non-linear behaviour of the RFNS element - large displacements and rotations

The reformulated four-node shell element has been shown to exhibit an excellent behaviour with respect to a well-known set of benchmark tests for shell elements. Recently the performance of the RFNS element was re-confirmed in terms of its asymptotic behaviour by means of classical and new limit tests. In the present paper, the RFNS formulation is extended to incorporate geometric non-linear behaviour. The total Lagrangian formulation is employed. The RFNS element non-linear formulation allows for large displacements and large rotations. An efficient performance of the nonlinear RFNS element formulation is confirmed for the applications investigated. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.