Determination of load paths in plates and shells

Load paths represent the load flow in structures and are used to identify how the load is transferred throughout the structure from points of application to support. The load function method is used in this paper for identification and visualization of load paths in plate and shell structures. Authors previously proposed a load function method to calculate the load paths in plane elasticity problems. This work extends the previous formulation to plates and shells. The significant difference from previous work is that the plates and shells equilibrium equations are not divergence free. Therefore, Helmholtz decomposition is used to decompose the stress field to divergence and curl free components to calculate the load function and find load paths. Mathematical formulations are presented to support the proposed method. Numerical and analytical examples show the application of this method.