• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제4권5호
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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.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제21권5호
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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.