Module: shells

Shells and plates utility functions, e.g. for creation of plate / shell mesh.

  • Author: Johannes Gerstmayr

  • Date: 2026-01-11 (created)

  • Notes: For a list of plot colors useful for matplotlib, see also utilities.PlotLineCode(…) Extended ShellMesh class with symbolic slope computation via vertexMapping. Copied from ANCFThinPlatePrecurved.py; intended to replace exudyn.shells.ShellMesh once merged into the Exudyn library.

CLASS ShellMesh (in module shells)

class description:

class for generation, representation of plate and shell meshes; creaton of Exudyn elements

Class function: __init__

__init__(self, vertices = [[-1,-1,0],[ 1,-1,0],[ 1, 1,0],[-1, 1,0]], numberOfElementsX = 1, numberOfElementsY = 1, youngsModulus = None, poissonsRatio = None, density = None, thickness = None, massProportionalDamping = 0., thicknessAtNodes = None)

  • classFunction:
    initialize rectangular shell mesh with geometry, discretization and physics parameters
  • input:
    vertices: list of four 3D vectors (numpy array or list), sorted [bottom-left, bottom-right, top-right, top-left];
    defining the reference positions of the corner nodes; if further transformations are added, use unit coordinates!
    numberOfElementsX: number of elements in x-direction
    numberOfElementsY: number of elements in y-direction
    youngsModulus: Young’s modulus; used for calculation of membrane and bending stiffness
    poissonsRatio: Poisson’s ratio for inplane shear deformation
    density: average density of plate/shell
    thickness: thickness of plate/shell
    massProportionalDamping: damping parameter which introduces damping proportional to distributed mass
  • notes:
    x-axis is aligned with bottom (y=min) and top (y=max); y-axis is aligned with left (x=min) and right (x=max)

Relevant Examples (Ex) and TestModels (TM) with weblink to github: