The MITC3+ shell element in geometric nonlinear analysis

•We present the MITC3+ shell finite element for geometric nonlinear analysis.•The Lagrangian formulation is employed allowing for large displacement kinematics.•An excellent performance of the element is demonstrated in nonlinear example solutions.

In this paper, we present the MITC3+ shell finite element for geometric nonlinear analysis and demonstrate its performance. The MITC3+ shell element, recently proposed for linear analysis [1], represents a further development of the MITC3 shell element. The total Lagrangian formulation is employed allowing for large displacements and large rotations. Considering several analysis problems, the nonlinear solutions using the MITC3+ shell element are compared with those obtained using the MITC3 and MITC4 shell elements. We conclude that the MITC3+ shell element shows, in the problems considered, the same excellent performance in geometric nonlinear analysis as already observed in linear analysis.