• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.571-590
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• 2005

An 8 node assumed stress hexahedral element with rotational degrees of freedom is proposed for static and free vibration analyses. The element formulation is based directly on an 8-node element. This direct formulation requires fewer computations than a similar element that is derived from an internal 20-node element in which the midside degrees of freedom are eliminated by expressing them in terms of displacements and rotations at corner nodes. The formulation is based on Hellinger-Reissner variational principle. Numerical examples are presented to show the validity and efficiency of the present element for static and free vibration analysis.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.443-460
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• 2001

This paper presents an effective application of a variable-node axisymmetric solid element designated as AQV (Axisymmetric Quadrilateral Variable-node element). The variable-node element with physical midside nodes helps to overcome some problems in connecting the different layer patterns on a quadrilateral mesh in the adaptive h-refinement. This element alleviates the necessity of imposing displacement constraints on irregular (hanging) nodes in order to enforce the inter-element compatibility. Therefore, the elements with variable mid-side nodes can be used effectively in the local mesh refinement for the axisymmetric structures which have stress concentrations. A modified Gaussian quadrature should be adopted to evaluate the stiffness matrices of the variable-node elements mainly because of the slope discontinuity of assumed displacement within the elements. Some numerical examples show the usefulness of variable-node axisymmetric elements in the practical application.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.699-712
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• 2002

In this paper, a new quadrilateral 5-node non-conforming membrane element with drilling degrees of freedom is presented. The main advantage of these elements is the relatively small number of integration points to evaluate a stiffness matrix comparing to the existing transition membrane elements (CLM elements). Moreover, the presented elements pass the patch test by virtue of the Direct Modification Method incorporated into the element formulation. The presented 5-node elements are proved to be very efficient when used in the local mesh refinement for the in-plane structures which have stress concentrations. And some numerical studies also show the good performance of the new element developed in this study.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1994.10a
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• pp.1-8
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• 1994

A variable-node-flat shell element designated as CLS which has variable mid-side nodes with drilling freedom has been presented in this paper. The shell element to be applied in finite element analysis has been developed by combining a membrane element named as CLM with drilling rotation d.o.f. and plate bending element. The combined shell element possess six degrees of freedom per node. By introducing the variable-node elements which have physical midside nodes, some difficulties associated with imposing displacement constraints on irregular nodes to enforce interelement compatibility in common adaptive h-refinement on quadrilateral mesh are easily overcome. Detailed numerical studies show the excellent performance of the new shell elements developed in this study.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1990.10a
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• pp.9-15
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• 1990

In this study, an adaptive mesh h-refinement procedure was presented in plate bending problems. By introducing the transition elements for the procedure, same drawbacks due to the irregular nodes are eliminated which are generated in the consequence of local mesh refinement in common adaptive h-version performed by single type of quadrilateral elements. For the above objective, compatible 5-node through 7-node transition plate bending elements are developed by including variable number of midside nodes. Using the Zienkiewicn-Zhu error estimator, some numerical examples are presented to show the effectiveness of the adaptive h-refinement using the transition elements.