Adaptive refinement analysis using hybrid-stress transition elements

In this paper, 4-node to 7-node hybrid-stress transition elements are developed for automatic adaptive refinement analysis of plane elasticity problems. The displacement-based transition quadrilateral elements are first adopted and applied to refinement analysis using both full and reduced integration schemes. As the stress field over the displacement-based transition elements is not continuous, a more smooth stress pattern is desirable and could enhance the performance of the element. Indeed, continuous stress field of various orders can be easily introduced into a displacement-based element through a variational procedure based on the Hellinger–Reissner functional. Of the same kinematics and displacement pattern, the resulting hybrid-stress transition elements are more superior to the displacement-based elements in possessing a more continuous high quality stress field within the element. The hybrid-stress transition elements are tested with classical benchmark examples, and the results indicate that hybrid-stress transition elements are consistently more efficient than the displacement-based counterparts in adaptive refinement analysis. A more economical rank-deficient version of hybrid-stress transition elements is also available. While they are less expensive to evaluate, they enjoy a very similar convergence rate as the rank-sufficient hybrid-stress transition elements.