Professional Documents
Culture Documents
[Email address]
REO 6
Iskander El Amri
1
8-node bi-quadratic quadrilateral
27
4
8
6) The first-order reduced integration elements such as 4-node 2D
element and 8-node 3D elements have only one integration point thus
it is possible for them to distort in such a way that the strains
calculated at the integration point are all zero leading to an
uncontrolled mesh distortion. This phenomenon is called hourglassing.
The modified reduced integration used is called hourglass control
7) When using a first-order plane strain with either a generalized plane
strain, axisymmetric quadrilateral, hexahedral solid elements, or
cylindrical elements, the strain operator provides constant volumetric
strain throughout the element, thus preventing mesh locking in case
the material response is approximately incompressible.
However, using a first-order triangular or a tetrahedral element should
be avoided as much as possible in stress analysis problems since these
elements are overly stiff and exhibit slow convergence with mesh
refinement. This is especially a problem with first-order tetrahedral
elements. If they are required, an extremely fine mesh may be needed
to obtain results of sufficient accuracy.
Second-order elements provide higher accuracy than first-order
elements for smooth problems that do not involve severe element