The objective of this thesis is the development and the extension of the SPH method for the analysis of isotropic and multilayered composite shell structures, undergoing dynamic loading. Major defects of the classical SPH method such as the lack of consistency, the tensile instability are solved by "Corrective Smoothed Particle Method", the use of the Total Lagrangian Formulation and artificial viscosity. Mindlin-Reissner Theory is employed for the modeling of thick shells, by using only one layer of particles in the mid-plane. The strong form of the governing equations for shell structures are discretized directly by the modified SPH method and solved using the central difference time integration scheme. An extension of the method has been introduced for the modeling of low-velocity impact of shells by rigid impactors. The contact force is calculated based on the Hertzian contact law. A last extension of the SPH method concerns the integration of Tsai-Wu failure criterion for the modeling of progressive degradation of multilayered structures.
