Conservative loads on shells

Generalized load vectorsp and edge load vectorsF are denned in terms of the body force and surface on a shell. Necessary and sufficient conditions are derived forp andF, and therefore the body force and the surface force, to be conservative. It is shown for example thatp must satisfyp _i=P _ijk q _j,1 q _k,2+Q _ij ¹ q _j,2–Q _ij ² q _j,1+R _i whereq is the generalized position vector andP _ijk, Q_i,j ¹ and Q_ij ² are skew tensors.The case of hydrostatic pressure is examined in detail.This work was supported in part by NSF grant MSM 8618657.