Shell finite element based on the Proper Generalized Decomposition for the modeling of cylindrical composite structures

•A finite element based on the Proper Generalized Decomposition is presented for the analysis of cylindrical laminated shells.•The displacement field is approximated as a sum of separated functions of in-plane coordinates and transverse coordinate.•Mechanical tests for thin/thick and deep/shallow laminated shells show the good capability of this method.•This finite element yields satisfactory results at a low computational cost.

The introduction of the Proper Generalized Decomposition (PGD) is presented for the layer-wise modeling of heterogeneous cylindrical shells. The displacement field is approximated as a sum of separated functions of the in-plane coordinates and the transverse coordinate. This choice yields to an iterative process that consists of solving a 2D and 1D problem successively at each iteration. In the thickness direction, a fourth-order expansion in each layer is considered. For the in-plane description, classical Finite Element method is used. The approach is assessed through mechanical tests for thin/thick and deep/shallow laminated cylindrical shells. Both convergence rate and accuracy are discussed.