An elastic–plastic analysis of large deflection of thin shell structure using a delta-sequence function

The analysis of thin shell under large deflection has complex problem associated with the geometrical and material nonlinearities, in which the solutions for stress and deformation are desired to obtain the same level accuracy. One of ordinary and powerful method for this subject is a finite element method that has generally inconvenience to be necessarily extensive calculation due to large number of freedom.This paper is concerned with the elastic–plastic analysis of thin shell structures by the hybrid method using a functional for the principle of modified complementary energy. For elastic–plastic materials, the numerical calculation could be well executed by the way that the stress distribution across the panel thickness is expressed as continuous function using the delta-sequence function. This approach introduces a considerable way for the reduction of computing volume. The proposed method was applied to discuss the resisting mechanism of thin shell structure under large deflection.