After successful completion of the course, students are able to

  explain and derive  concepts of shell mechanics and applications to composite materials       explain, derive, and apply various numerical  implementation of shell models and locking technologies in Matlab and Abaqus       explain, derive and apply variational principles for fracture to thin walled structures.           

The course is aimed at discussing modelling strategies of thin walled structures and fracture applications.     The lecture focuses on mechanics of shells  with a first review of classical theories (Kirchhoff-Love and Reissner-Mindlin) and posterior derivation of advanced shell models     In the tutorial part of the course selected methods are applied to example problems and implementation details which well be documented in a small report.

Oral lecturing and computer-based applications.  There a series of slides  with derivations of equations, sketches and case studies.   In the tutorial part,  theoretical aspects will be discussed including. Computational codes will be given to illustrate the theoretical contents and specific aspects of the derivations. Computational implementation as user-defined routines in FE-codes will be covered.           

As a examination, students are expected to summarise an application (picked at random) in a report.

Strength of Materials, Continuum Mechanics of Solids, Linear Elasticity