Finite Element Analysis of Membrane Structures

Published in Recent Advances in Textile Membranes and Inflatable Structures, Springer Verlag, pp. 47 - 68, 2005
DOI: 10.1007/1-4020-3317-6_4

Abstract

This paper summarizes the development for a large displacement formulation of a membrance composed of three-node triangular elements. A formulation in terms of the deformation gradient is first constructed in terms of nodal variables. In particular, the use of the right Cauchy-Green deformation tensor is shown to lead to a particulary simple representation in terms of nodal quantities. This may then be used to construct general models for use in static and transient analyses.