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Origins, milestones and directions of the finite element method— A personal view

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Summary

The article traces the important steps of the development of the finite element method from its origins in aircraft structural engineering to the present day, where it provides the essential tool for solution of a great variety of problems in engineering and physics. The emphasis and the choice of the “landmarks” stresses the aspects which are general and essentially of mathematical nature applicable to a wide range of situations. For this reason no mention is made of perhaps equally important developments to new application fields such as metal forming, electromagnetics, geomechanics etc.

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  1. Institute for Numerical Methods in Engineering, University College of Swansea, Wales, UK

    O. C. Zienkiewicz

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This article is being published at the same time in Volume IV of the Handbook of Numerical Analysis, ed. J.L. Lions and P. Ciarlet (Elsevier Science).

The author also holds the Unesco Chair of Numerical Methods in Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain where part of this paper was written.

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Zienkiewicz, O.C. Origins, milestones and directions of the finite element method— A personal view. ARCO 2, 1–48 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02736188

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