On the numerical corroboration of an obstacle problem for linearly elastic flexural shells.

In this article, we study the numerical corroboration of a variational model governed by a fourth-order elliptic operator that describes the deformation of a linearly elastic flexural shell subjected not to cross a prescribed flat obstacle. The problem under consideration is modelled by means of a set of variational inequalities posed over a non-empty, closed and convex subset of a suitable Sobolev space and is known to admit a unique solution. Qualitative and quantitative numerical experiments corroborating the validity of the model and its asymptotic similarity with Koiter's model are also presented.This article is part of the theme issue 'Non-smooth variational problems with applications in mechanics'.

Numerical methods for static shallow shells lying over an obstacle.

In this paper, a finite element analysis to approximate the solution of an obstacle problem for a static shallow shell confined in a half space is presented. To begin with, we establish, by relying on the properties of enriching operators, an estimate for the approximate bilinear form associated with the problem under consideration. Then, we conduct an error analysis and we prove the convergence of the proposed numerical scheme.