A comparison study on the performance of lower order solid finite element for elastic analysis of plate and shell structures

The objective of this research is to assess the performance of lower order solid finite elements which will be ultimately applied into the safety analysis of nuclear containment building. For the safety analysis of large structures such as nuclear containment building, efficient lower order finite element is necessarily required to calculate the structural response of containment building with low computational cost. In this study, the state of the art formulations of lower order solid finite element are throughly reviewed and the best possible solid finite element is adopted into the development of nuclear containment analysis system. Three 8-node solid finite elements based on standard strain-displacement relationship, B-bar method and EAS method are implemented as computer modules and completely tested with various plate and shell structures. The present results can be directly applied into the analysis code development for general reinforced concrete structures