Rotation Free Triangular Plate and Shell Elements

The paper describes how finite element method and the finite volume method can be successfully combined to derive two new families of thin plate and shell triangles with translational degrees of freedom as the only nodal variable. The simplest element of the two families based on combining a linear interpolation of displacements with cell centered and cell vertex finite volume schemes are presented in detail. Examples of the good performance of the new rotation-free plate and shell triangles are given