Co-rotational formulation for dynamic analysis of space membranes based on triangular elements

摘要

Nonlinear triangular space membrane elements are developed for the analysis of thin structures subjected to dynamic loading. By using a co-rotated framework, displacements are decomposed into rigid body motions and pure deformational displacements. The novelty of the formulation is that it employs the co-rotated framework to derive tangent dynamic matrix and an inertial force vector. Closed forms for the inertia force vector, the tangent dynamic matrix, the mass matrix and the gyroscopic matrix are derived directly from the current coordinate transformation matrix. Three numerical examples are presented to illustrate the robustness and efficiency of the new co-rotational formulation. The efficiency of the proposed approach is compared to the updated Lagrangian method, and savings in computation of up to 50 %, were achieved.