tria3, tria6#
Purpose
Element functions for a 3 node/18 DOF and 6 nodes/36 DOF shell elements.
Description
In a model description matrix, element property rows for tria3 elements follow the standard format
[n1 n2 n3 MatID ProID EltID Theta Zoff T1 T2 T3]
giving the node identification numbers ni, material MatID, property ProID. Other optional information is EltID the element identifier, Theta the angle between material x axis and element x axis (currently unused), Zoff the off-set along the element z axis from the surface of the nodes to the reference plane, Ti the thickness at nodes (used instead of il entry, currently the mean of the Ti is used).
The element only supports isotropic materials with the format described in m_elastic.
The supported property declaration format is described in p_shell. Note that tria3 only supports thin plate formulations.
tria3 : p_shellformulations other than 5 call a T3 triangle for membrane properties and a DKT for bending (see [53] for example). Formulation 5 calls q4cs which presents significant shear locking and should thus not be used.
tria6 :p_shell formulation is not used since the currently the only implementation is a call to q4cs (formulation 5).
See also