TOWARDS ADAPTIVE MESH REFINEMENT - APPLICATION OF NEW RECTANGULAR HYBRID FINITE-ELEMENTS IN 2D ELASTICITY PROBLEMS

A modified global approach to choosing stress terms for hybrid finite elements in plane stress problems is based on the known requirement of minimum number of stress parameters. Let nβ be the number of independent β‐stress parameters, nq the number of nodal displacements and nR the number of rigid body degrees of freedom, then the satisfaction of the criterion nβ ≥ nq − nR of the assembled structure instead of the individual element enables the reduction of nβ. New rectangular hybrid transition elements applied in adaptive mesh refinement and a new eight node rectangular invariant element including only 12 β parameters, based on the modified criterion, are presented here. The new elements, which are used in order to analyse the stress singularity of two bonded elastic plates of different materials, yield reliable results compared with results based on classical hybrid elements, displacement elements and the analytic solution. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd