Nonlinear finite element formulation for analyzing shape memory alloy cylindrical panels

In this paper, a general incremental displacement based finite element formulation capable of modeling material nonlinearities based on first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) is developed for cylindrical shape memory alloy (SMA) shells. The Boyd–Lagoudas phenomenological model with polynomial hardening in conjunction with 3D incremental convex cutting plane explicit algorithm is implemented for preparing the SMA constitutive model in the finite element formulation. Several numerical examples are presented for demonstrating the performance of the proposed formulation in stress, deflection and phase transformation analysis of pseudoelastic behavior of shape memory cylindrical panels with various boundary conditions. Also, it is shown that the presented formulation can be implemented for studying plates and beams with rectangular cross section