eng Science and Education Publishing American Journal of Mechanical Engineering 2013-11-25 1 7 427 433 10.12691/ajme-1-7-55 AJME20131755 article Milan Sága milan.saga@fstroj.uniza.sk 1 Peter Pecháč 1 Milan Vaško 1 Department of Applied Mechanics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Univerzity of Žilina, Žilina, Slovak Republic Our paper deals with theoretical and numerical study of the discrete fully stress design (FSD) algorithms for thin shell finite elements. Authors present seven mathematical formulations of the direct strength designing. Relations between stresses, membrane and bending element forces (moments) and element thicknesses are studied. Using selected numerical tests of the proposed algorithms are compared. http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajme/1/7/55/ajme-1-7-55.pdf fully stress designstress analysisthin shell finite element