Implicit Analysis of Reissner–Mindlin shells with the Trace FEM

Abstract

The linear Reissner-Mindlin shell is discretized with the Trace FEM. The geometry of the shell is implicitly defined by means of (multiple) level-set functions. The implementational aspects of the Trace FEM, i.e., integration, stabilization and essential boundary conditions, are considered in detail resulting in a higher-order accurate Trace FEM.