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A two-level mesh repartitioning scheme for the displacement-based lower-order finite element methods in volumetric locking-free analyses

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Abstract

We present an approach for repartitioning existing lower-order finite element mesh based on quadrilateral or triangular elements for the linear and nonlinear volumetric locking-free analysis. This approach contains two levels of mesh repartitioning. The first-level mesh re-partitioning is an h-adaptive mesh refinement for the generation of a refined mesh needed in the second-level mesh coarsening. The second-level mesh coarsening involves a gradient smoothing scheme performed on each pair of adjacent elements selected based on the first-level refined mesh. With the repartitioned mesh and smoothed gradient, the equivalence between the mixed finite element formulation and the displacement-based finite element formulation is established. The extension to nonlinear finite element formulation is also considered. Several linear and non-linear numerical benchmarks are solved and numerical inf-sup tests are conducted to demonstrate the accuracy and stability of the proposed formulation in the nearly incompressible applications.

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  1. Livermore Software Technology Corporation, Livermore, CA, 94550, USA

    C. T. Wu & W. Hu

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  1. C. T. Wu
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  2. W. Hu
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Correspondence to C. T. Wu.

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Wu, C.T., Hu, W. A two-level mesh repartitioning scheme for the displacement-based lower-order finite element methods in volumetric locking-free analyses. Comput Mech 50, 1–18 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00466-011-0665-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00466-011-0665-7

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