A Novel Shell Element for Quasi Static and Natural Frequency Analysis of Textile Composite Structures

Abstract

A shell element for analysis of textile composite structures is proposed in this paper. Based on the embedded element method and solid shell concept, the architecture, geometry, and material properties of a repeat unit cell (RUC) of textile composite are embedded in a single shell finite element. Flat and curved textile composite structures are used to apply and verify the present shell element. The deformation and natural frequency obtained by the present shell element are compared against those computed from full threedimensional finite element analyses. It is shown that the proposed shell element is efficient, simple, and reliable for textile composite structural analysis.