AN ASSESSMENT OF HIGHER-ORDER ISOPARAMETRIC ELEMENTS FOR SOLVING AN ELASTIC PROBLEM

In this report isoparametric elements of various orders are used to solve an elastic problem in plane stress. The particular engineering structure has been selected to represent problems in which damage growth takes place at stress concentrators by the mechanisms of creep and fatigue. Since the inelastic solution of such problems may be treated as a succession of many elastic solutions, attention is focussed on the identification of the most appropriate element to obtain elastic solutions for a single geometry. The elastic solutions obtained for one geometry are compared with each other and with an exact solution in order to assess their relative performance in solving the problem.