Improvements in Shear Locking and Spurious Zero Energy Modes Using Chebyshev Finite Element Method

In this paper, the authors present Chebyshev finite element (CFE) method for the analysis of Reissner–Mindlin (RM) plates and shells. Chebyshev polynomials are a sequence of orthogonal polynomials that are defined recursively. The values of the polynomials belong to the interval [−1,1] and vanish at the Gauss points (GPs). Therefore, high-order shape functions, which satisfy the interpolation condition at the points, can be performed with Chebyshev polynomials. Full gauss quadrature rule was used for stiffness matrix, mass matrix and load vector calculations. Static and free vibration analyses of thick and thin plates and shells of different shapes subjected to different boundary conditions were conducted. Both regular and irregular meshes were considered. The results showed that by increasing the order of the shape functions, CFE automatically overcomes shear locking without the formation of spurious zero energy modes. Moreover, the results of CFE are in close agreement with the exact solutions even for coarse and irregular meshes.

A consecutive-interpolation finite element method for heat transfer analysis

A consecutive-interpolation 4-node quadrilateral finite element (CQ4) is further extended to solve twodimensional heat transfer problems, taking the average nodal gradients as interpolation condition, resulting in highorder continuity solution without smoothing operation and without increasing the number of degrees of freedom. The implementation is straightforward and can be easily integrated into any existing FEM code. Several numerical examples are investigated to verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed formulation in two-dimensional heat transfer analysis.

Pullback-Flat Acts are Strongly Flat

Let 5 be a monoid. A right S-system A is called strongly flat if the functor A ⊗ — (from the category of left S-systems into the category of sets) preserves pullbacksand equalizers. (This concept arises in B. Stenström, Math. Nachr. 48(1971), 315-334 under the name weak flatness). The main result of the present paper is a proof that for A to be strongly flat it is in fact sufficient that A ⊗ — preserve only pullbacks. The approach taken is to develop an "interpolation" condition for pullback-preservation, and then to show its equivalence to Stenström's conditions for strong flatness.