A Novel Membrane Finite Element with Drilling Rotations

A new low order membrane nite element is presented. The element formulation is based on the variational principle of Hughes and Brezzi employing an independent rotation eld. In the present work nonconforming interpolation is used for the drill rotation eld. Both triangular and quadrilateral elements are considered. Combined with the Reissner-Mindlin plate bending element of O~ nate, Zarate and Flores, where the rotations are interpolated by nonconforming functions, results in a simple shell element with three translational displacements at corner nodes and three rotation components at the midpoints of the element edges as degrees of freedom.