Laminated composites are increasingly being used in many structural applications where high resistance to corrosion and chemical attacks and/or high strength to weight ratio is required. A Consistent Laminated shell element has been recently formulated by Koziey and used in the linear analysis of laminated shell structures. This element has a major advantage of being free from the locking phenomenon associated with isoparametric shell elements. In this study, the formulation of the Consistent Laminated shell element is extended to include both large displacement static and dynamic analysis. A detailed presentation of the nonlinear stiffness matrix, unbalanced load vector, and the consistent mass matrix as well as a simple approach for coding these matrices is included in this study. Verification of the large displacement formulation reveals the excellent performance of the element.; A nonlinear material model for FRP laminates is added to the large displacement static formulation of the Consistent Laminated shell element. The model is used to study the nonlinear static behavior of FRP chimneys subjected to both thermal and wind loads. An assessment for the level of safety against strength and instability failure, provided by a simplified design procedure previously developed by Awad, is then conducted using the nonlinear Consistent Laminated shell element model. The results obtained provide an indication about the adequacy of this simplified procedure.
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