Dynamics of elasto-viscoplastic plates and shells

Summary In this paper, the problem of the elasto-viscoplastic dynamic behaviour of geometrically non-linear plates and shells is studied under the assumption of small strains and moderate rotations. The Chaboche and Bodner-Partom models were chosen among several types of constitutive laws. To avoid the calculation of the stiffness matrix, an effective procedure using the central difference method of solving the equations of motion was applied. The trapezoidal method was used to integrate the constitutive viscoplastic laws. A nine-node isoparametric shell element was utilised for the finite element algorithm.