EN
A hybrid-mixed ANS four-node shell element by using the sampling surfaces (SaS) technique is developed. The SaS formulation is based on choosing inside the nth layer In not equally spaced SaS parallel to the middle surface of the shell in order to introduce the displacements of these surfaces as basic shell variables. Such choice of unknowns with the consequent use of Lagrange polynomials of degree In − 1 in the thickness direction for each layer permits the presentation of the layered shell formulation in a very compact form. The SaS are located inside each layer at Chebyshev polynomial nodes that allows one to minimize uniformly the error due to the Lagrange interpolation. To implement the efficient analytical integration throughout the element, the enhanced ANS method is employed. The proposed hybrid-mixed four-node shell element is based on the Hu-Washizu variational equation and exhibits a superior performance in the case of coarse meshes. It could be useful for the 3D stress analysis of thick and thin doubly-curved shells since the SaS formulation gives the possibility to obtain numerical solutions with a prescribed accuracy, which asymptotically approach the exact solutions of elasticity as the number of SaS tends to infinity.