Development of Membrane, Plate and Flat Shell Elements in Java

This study developed membrane, plate and flat shell elements with drilling degrees of freedom using an object oriented approach and JAVA programming language. The membrane elements developed in the program included a four node and an eight node isoparametric elements (QUAD4 &QUAD8) respectively. The plate elements developed were the four node and the eight node discrete Kirchoff quadrilateral (DKQ4 & DKQ8) respectively. A bilinear degenerated shell element with drilling degrees of freedom was also developed. A finite element program using JAVA which addressed most of the deficiencies inherent in the work of Kansara (2004) and Nikishkov (2010) was developed. The program computed displacements and stresses at each node of the finite element model. The loads that could be applied to the structure included concentrated loads, uniformly distributed surface loads and various load combinations. Several test examples were analyzed using the developed finite element program and the results were compared with those obtained from Kansara (2004), the commercial finite element analysis program SAP 2000 and LISA.