UNIFIED AND MIXED FORMULATION OF THE 4-NODE QUADRILATERAL ELEMENTS BY ASSUMED STRAIN METHOD - APPLICATION TO THERMOMECHANICAL PROBLEMS

In this paper, a class of 'assumed strain' mixed finite element methods based on the Hu-Washizu variational principle is presented. Special care is taken to avoid hourglass modes and shear locking as well as volumetric locking. An unified framework for the 4-node quadrilateral solid and thermal as well as thermomechanical coupling elements with uniform reduced integration (URI) and selective numerical integration (SI) schemes is developed. The approach is simply implemented by a small change of the standard technique and is applicable to arbitrary non-linear constitutive laws including isotropic and anisotropic material behaviours. The implementation of the proposed SI elements is straightforward, while the development of the proposed URI elements requires 'anti-hourglass stresses' which are evaluated by classical constitutive equations. Several numerical examples are given to demonstrate the performance of the suggested formulation, including static/dynamic mechanical problems, heat conduction and thermomechanical problems.