A boundary element formulation for geometrically nonlinear analysis of shear deformable shells

A new boundary element method to solve geometrically nonlinear deflection problems of shear deformable shallow shells having quadratic mid-surface is presented. The displacement integral equations have been derived to obtain five integral equations in term of displacements—two rotations, one out-of-plane displacement and two in-plane displacements. The boundary is discretised into quadratic isoparametric elements and the domain is transferred to the boundary using the Dual Reciprocity Technique. A simple, yet efficient load incremental technique is developed to solve the nonlinear problem. Several examples are presented, and the results are in good agreement with the finite element method.