Within a layered shell object, straight normals remain straight, which enforces full composite behavior between layers. Straight normals do not necessarily remain normal to the mid-surface, which allows transverse shear deformation. For membrane and bending behavior, quadratic displacement fields are assumed with appropriate handling to prevent shear locking. Plane-stress behavior is assumed within each layer.

Additional details on the formulation of layered shell elements are available in the

Analysis Reference Manual (The Shell Element > Layered, page 159).

See Also

• [Nonlinear layered shell] article