AbstractA new nine node degenerated shell element is presented in this paper. In the formulation of the new element, an enhanced interpolation of the transverse shear strains in the natural co‐ordinate system is used to overcome the shear locking problem, and an enhanced interpolation of the membrane strains in the local Cartesian co‐ordinate system is applied to avoid membrane locking behaviour. It is shown that the resulting element has the requisite number of zero eigenvalues and associated rigid body modes. The element does not exhibit membrane or shear locking for large span/thickness ratios. To illustrate the good performance of the new element some examples are presented including comparisons with the behaviour of the selectively integrated Lagrangian degenerated shell eleme