Four-Node Quadrilateral Element with Continuous Nodal Stress for Geometrical Nonlinear Analysis

In this paper, the performance of a hybrid ‘FE-Meshfree’ quadrilateral element with continuous nodal stress (Quad4-CNS) is investigated for geometrical nonlinear solid mechanic problems. By combining finite element method (FEM) and meshfree method, this Quad4-CNS synergizes the individual strengths of these two methods, which leads to higher accuracy, better convergence rate, as well as high tolerance to mesh distortion. Therefore, Quad4-CNS is attractive for geometrical nonlinear solid mechanic problems where excessive distorted meshes occur. For geometrical nonlinear analysis, numerical results show that the results of Quad4-CNS element are much better than those of four-node isoparametric quadrilateral element (Quad4), and are comparable to quadratic quadrilateral element (Quad8) and other hybrid ‘FE- Meshfree’ elements.