Abstract: A triangular flat shell element GST18 with three nodes and eighteen degrees of freedom is constructed. The membrane and bendingparts of the shell eloment are the generalized triangular membrane element with drilling freedoms GT9 and the generalized conforming plate bending element GPL-T9, respectively. By using the generalized conformingmethod the convergence of the element is guaranteed. By introducingthe drilling freedoms the difficulty that the stiffness matrix is singularwhen the neighbouring elements around a common node are coplanar is overcome. The results of numerical tests demonstrate that the present element exhibits excellent performance.