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Four-node shell element (S4 and S4R)

This is a general purpose linear 4-sided shell element. For the node numbering and the direction of the normal to the surface the reader is referred to the quadratic eight-node shell element (S8) in Figure 60 (just drop the middle nodes).

In CalculiX, S4 and S4R four-node shell elements are expanded into three-dimensional C3D8I and C3D8R elements, respectively. The way this is done can be derived from the analogous treatment of the S8-element in Figure 61 (again, drop the middle nodes). For more information on shell elements the reader is referred to the eight-node shell element S8.