• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.569-586
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• 1996

A new three-dimensional 8-node solid element with rotational degrees of freedom is presented. The proposed element is established by adding rotational degrees of freedom to the basic 8-node solid element. Thus the element has three translations and three rotational degrees of freedom per node. The corner rotations are introduced by transforming the hierarchical mid-edge displacements which are parabolic shape along an edge. The derivation of the element is based on the mixed variational principles in which the rotations are introduced as independent variables. Several types of non-conforming modes are selectively added to the displacement fields to obtain a series of improved elements. The resulting elements do not have the spurious zero energy modes and Poisson's ratio locking and pass patch test. Numerical examples show that presented non-conforming solid elements with rotational degrees of freedom show good performance even in the highly distorted meshes.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1995.10a
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• pp.153-160
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• 1995

Mixed finite element formulations for incompressible materials show pressure oscillations or pressure modes in four-node quadrilateral elements. The criterion for the stability in the pressure solution is the so-called Babufka-Brezzi stability condition, and the four-node elements based on mixed variational principles do not appear to satisfy this condition. In this study, a pressure continuity residual based on the pressure discontinuity at element edges is used to study the stabilization of pressure solutions in bilinear displacement-constant pressure four-node quadrilateral elements. It is shown that the pressure solutions, although stable, exhibit sensitivity to the stabilization parameters.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.711-725
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• 1998

Mixed finite element formulations for incompressible materials show pressure oscillations or pressure modes in four-node quadrilateral elements. The criterion for the stability in the pressure solution is the so-called Babu$\check{s}$ka-Brezzi stability condition, and the four-node elements based on mixed variational principles do not appear to satisfy this condition. In this study, a pressure continuity residual based on the pressure discontinuity at element edges proposed by Hughes and Franca is used to study the stabilization of pressure solutions in bilinear displacement-constant pressure four-node quadrilateral elements. Also, a solid mechanics problem is presented by which the stability of mixed elements can be studied. It is shown that the pressure solutions, although stable, are shown to exhibit sensitivity to the stabilization parameters.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.105-122
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• 2001

A new three-dimensional 13-node hexahedral element with rotational degrees of freedom, which is designated as MR-H13 element, is presented. The proposed element is established by adding five nodes to one of the six faces of basic 8-node hexahedral element. The new element can be effectively used in the connection between the refined mesh and the coarser mesh. The derivation of the current element in this paper is based on the variational principles in which the rotation and skew-symmetric stress are introduced as independent variables. Numerical examples show that the performance of the new element is satisfactory.