WEAK FORM QUADRATURE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF ELASTOSTATIC AND FREE VIBRATION PROBLEMS OF TOROIDAL SHELLS

A toroidal weak form quadrature shell element is established based on the thin shell theory. Some static and free vibration problems of circular and elliptic toroidal shells are studied. High accuracy and com-putational effciency are achieved in the quadrature element analysis of numerical examples as compared with the finite element and analytical solutions. It is found that the ratio between the major and minor axes has a significant influence on the accuracy and the convergence rate for elliptic toroidal shells.