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In this study, we present a novel finite element approach to simulate crack propagation in shell structures. A local spider-web mesh is placed at the tip of a crack propagating through a global background mesh. Interface shell elements with assumed natural strains are used to connect a non-matching interface between the background mesh and the local spider-web mesh. Interface shell elements are also employed for trimmed shell elements created by cutting shell elements with the crack line. Numerical simulation of crack propagation in shell structures can be easily performed by moving the local spider-web mesh with an incremental crack growth. Numerical experiments show that the present method is very efficient and effective to accurately simulate crack propagation in shell structures without significantly increasing computational burden and implementation complexity of remeshing process.

In this study, a novel interface shell element (ISE) is developed based on a variable-node element formulation to couple non-matching quadrilateral shell meshes. Shape functions for ISEs are explicitly presented in a polynomial form with the use of appropriate supports of weight functions in moving least square (MLS) approximation. Assumed natural strains in the form of the mixed interpolation of tensorial components (MITC) approach are employed to avoid the transverse shear locking when the thickness of shell tends to zero. Moreover, an assumed membrane strain field defined over quadrilateral subdomains subdividing an ISE is used to alleviate the membrane locking in curved ISEs. Numerical experiments show the effectiveness and efficiency of ISE for connecting dissimilar quadrilateral shell meshes at a common interface.

Summary In this paper, we present a novel scheme to generate trimmed quadrilateral shell meshes using a paving and cutting algorithm. Paving with well‐shaped quadrilateral shell elements is initiated from a seed element placed in the interior of a geometric surface and proceeds around the bou...

In this study, a novel scheme for modelling and analysis of spot-welded shell structures is presented by placing local spider-web shell meshes representing the weld nugget region in a global shell mesh. Interface shell elements are employed for trimmed shell elements with arbitrary number of nodes created by cutting a global shell mesh with the boundaries of local spider-web shell meshes. Transverse shear and membrane locking phenomena in interface shell elements are effectively alleviated by introducing assumed natural strain fields. Conventional elastic beam elements with six degrees of freedom are used to connect the center nodes of local spider-web shell meshes. The present method can construct high-quality shell meshes around spot welds without any global remeshing, which makes it very efficient and effective for the analysis of spot-welded shell structures.