MATLAB CODE DEVELOPMENT ON

FINITE ELEMENT METHOD OF THIN SHELL

Student : MENH Panha
Advisors : Dr. Adinel GAVRUS, Dr. LIM Sovanvichet
Field Materials Science and Structures, Institute of Technology of Cambodia
Tel : (+855) 10 55 78 77, Email : menhpanha@gmail.com

I INTRODUCTION V MATLAB CODE DEVELOPMENT

A shell is a curved structure with thickness much smaller than the other two
dimensions, which could be seen in roof of a building with special architectural
Reading Input : Initial coordinates of finite
requirement and large volume of space, or cylindrical water tank, etc. To

Start
element nodes, topology of finite elements,
analyze its structure, using analytical method is such a complicated way and
material properties, shell thickness, applied
sometime impossible when its geometry is not simple. The Finite Element
loads and boundary conditions
Method is one of the numerical methods for obtaining the approximate solution,
which is especially powerful when dealing with boundary conditions defined
over complex geometries.
Calculation of Shape functions, stiffness matrix and
mass matrix
II OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study is to develop a MATLAB code project to analyze the
Assemble local matrix into global matrix
internal forces and deformations of thin shell structure following the concept of
Finite Element Method.

Calculation of displacements and other internal nodal

forces.
III THIN SHELL THEORY
Shell carries loads in all directions, and therefore undergoes bending and
twisting, as well as in-plane deformation. Thin Shell theories are basically based Plot and write the results into text files.
on LOVE-KIRCHOFF assumption as follow:
1. As the shell deforms, the normal to the un-deformed middle surface
remain straight and normal to the deformed middle surface undergo no
extension. i.e., all strain components in the direction of the normal to the middle End
surface is zero.
2. The transverse normal stress is neglected.

Hence, we can reduce the problems from three dimensional into two VI RESULT AND CONCLUSION
dimensional.

IV THIN SHELL FINITE ELEMENTS

The curved geometry of shell can be analyzed by dividing it into suitable
number of flat plate elements. These elements are based on combination of
membrane element and bending element that enforced KIRCHOFF’s
hypothesis. The element equations must then be transformed to a common
global coordinate system, and also modified to account for the in-plane forces.
The verification are made by comparing results from coding with those from
analytical method and from the simulation in ABAQUS software. Despite many
commercial FEM software available on the market, developing the FEM coding
project is still important. In commercial software, they only provide result
following their template, in which some particular points are missing when
needed. Personal development coding project will allow us to analyze the
structure, extract result and arrange the data input in our preferable way.

REFERENCES
1. G. R. LIU and S. S. QUEK. The Finite Element Method, A Practical Course,
2003.
2. M. ASGHAR BHATTI. Advanced Topics in Finite Element Method
Typical shell structure Local and global axes
modeled with flat elements for a shell element
Analysis of Structure: with Mathematica and MATLAB Computations, 2006.