Adaptive finite element procedures in elasticity and plasticity

The paper discusses error estimation and h-adaptive finite element procedures for elasticity and plasticity problems. For the spatial discretization error, an enhanced Superconvergent Patch Recovery (SPR) technique which improves the error estimation by including fulfillment of equilibrium and boundary conditions in the smoothing procedure is discussed. It is known that an accurate error estimation on an early stage of analysis results in a more rapid and optimal adaptive process. It is shown that node patches and element patches give similar quality of the postprocessed solution. For dynamic problems, a postprocessed type of error estimate and an adaptive procedure for the semidiscrete finite element method are discussed. It is shown that the procedure is able to update the spatial mesh and the time step size so that both spatial and time discretization errors are controlled within specified tolerances. A time-discontinuous Galerkin method for solving the second-order ordinary differential equations in structural dynamics is also presented. Many advantages of the new approach such as high order accuracy, possibility to filter effects of spurious modes and convenience to apply adaptive analysis are observed. For plasticity problems, some recent work that improved plastic strains and plastic localization is discussed.