Abstract
An automatic finite element procedure based on h method is presented for shell-solid structures. The geometry of the structure composed by beam, shell and solid parts is created by selecting necessary parts from parts library, giving dimensions to the parts and arranging them in the 3D space to get the required geometry of the structure. Physical conditions for the structural analysis are given directly on the geometry of the parts. By giving the total number of elements to create, the element mesh including beam, shell and solid elements is generated, constraint equations are created to combine beam, shell and solid elements on the surfaces between parts to be combined, and the initial analysis is made automatically. By giving only the allowable ratio of the finite element error, the adaptive mesh refinement is made and the detailed analysis is also carried out for the shell-solid structure automatically. A practical PC program based on the present method has been developed. Numerical examples are demonstrated to show the validity and effectiveness of the proposed method.
