Within the layered shell element, straight normals remain straight, enforcing full composite behavior between layers. Straight normals do not necessarily remain normal to the mid-surface, allowing 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 shell] article