Avoiding Membrane Locking with Regge Interpolation

Abstract: In this paper we present a novel method to overcome membrane locking of thin shells. An interpolation operator into the so-called Regge finite element space is inserted in the membrane energy term to weaken the implicitly given kernel constraints. The number of constraints is asymptotically halved on triangular meshes compared to reduced integration techniques. Provided the interpolant, this approach can be incorporated easily into any shell element. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by means of several benchmark examples.