Popular benchmark problems for geometric nonlinear analysis of shells

Abstract

In most, if not all, of the previous work on finite element formulation and nonlinear solution procedures, results of geometric nonlinear benchmark problems of shells are presented in the form of load-deflection curves. In this paper, eight sets of popularly employed benchmark problems are identified and their detailed reference solutions are obtained and tabulated. It is hoped that these solutions will form a convenient basis for subsequent comparison and that the tedious yet inaccurate task of reconstructing data points by graphical measurement of previously reported load-deflection curves can be avoided. Moreover, the relative convergent difficulty of the problems are revealed by the number of load increments and the total number of iterations required by an automatic load incrementation scheme for attaining the converged solutions under the maximum loads. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.