Page 10 - CBT 2018
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SHELL STRUCTURES
Shell structures are common in a
variety of civil engineering applications, such as sport facilities, airports, and dams. They also constitute the main structural element in pressure vessels, rockets, and prosthetic heart valves. In architecture, they are used for aesthetic reasons even if other structural forms can be equivalently adopted. Analysis and design of shell structures can only be performed by computer modeling, particularly if the shell’s geometry is complex. Reliable computer models of shells have been under development for the past 40-50 years, and these models are typically based on a variational equation, in which Em and Eb represent membrane- and bending-related strain tensors, S is the stress tensor, u and
d represent displacements and b represents load. CEGE researchers have shown that successful analysis of shells requires a special evaluation of Em and they have developed a robust numerical algorithm, which promises accurate results for shell structures. [5,6]
