5 Solidandshellelements

Solid and shell elements
Theodore Sussman, Ph.D.
© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 1

Overview
• 2D and 3D solid elements
– Types of elements
– Effects of element distortions
– Incompatible modes elements
– u/p elements for incompressible analysis
• Membrane elements
• Shell elements
– Director vectors and rotational degrees of freedom
– Types of elements
– Large strain shell elements

2D and 3D solid elements
• 2D elements
– axisymmetric
– plane stress
– plane strain
– 3D plane stress (membrane, we will discuss these elements later)
• 3D elements

2D solid elements
• Types of 2D elements:
• 2D elements can lie in one of several planes:

Some uses of 2D solid elements
Axisymmetric seal Thin plate with holes, Long tunnel,

membrane action, plane strain assumed
plane stress assumed

Theory of 2D and 3D solid elements
• Based on the isoparametric concept.
x(r , s )   hL (r , s )x L h1  1 at node 1
L = 0 at other nodes x(r , s, t )   hL (r , s, t )x L
u(r , s )   hL (r , s )u L L
L u(r , s, t )   hL (r , s, t )u L
L

• Numerical integration, using Gaussian integration.
• The strains and stresses are calculated at the integration points.

• Elements must be compatible.
– Adjacent element faces must be topologically identical, with the
same number of nodes

• Example solution with incompatible meshing.
– Beam in pure bending
M
M

Types of results
• Nodal results: displacements, velocities, accelerations, temperature, ...
– Nodal results are continuous between adjacent elements
• Element results: strains, stresses, ...
– Element results are computed at the integration points
– Element results need to be extrapolated to the element boundaries
– In general, element results are discontinuous between adjacent elements
Nodal result: u node 351

Element result: τ int pt 22 in el 25

Element results
• By default, the solver passes integration point results to the post-processor.
• If the command RESULTS-ELEMENT LOCATION=CORNER is used in

the model definition, the solver extrapolates the integration results to the
corner nodes, then passes the extrapolated results to the post-processor.
• The post-processor can smooth the integration point or corner node results,
to obtain results at the nodes.

Types of 2D elements
First-order Second-order
Linear displacement, Quadratic displacement,

"constant" strain linear strain
Inexpensive, Relatively expensive,

need many elements need fewer elements
for a given accuracy for a given accuracy

Types of 3D elements
First-order Second-order
Linear displacement, Quadratic displacement,

"constant" strain linear strain
Inexpensive, Relatively expensive,

need many elements need fewer elements
for a given accuracy for a given accuracy

First and second-order elements
First order elements Second order elements
Less computationally expensive for a More computationally expensive for a

given mesh size given mesh size
Less memory required for a given mesh More memory required for a given mesh
size size
Too stiff in bending Accurate results in pure bending
Does not resolve stress gradients well Stress gradients are resolved well
Fine mesh needed for an accurate solution Coarse mesh can give an accurate solution
Well suited for contact analysis Not as well suited for contact analysis

Cost of elements
• The cost of an element consists of two parts: For the 27-node
– Cost of assembly element, there are
81 element degrees
 element  element of freedom
 stiffness 
  matrix 
degrees
of freedom
integration
points  
For the 27-node element

element, there are degrees
27 integration points of freedom
The cost of assembly is not influenced by the arrangement of

elements within the mesh.

Cost of elements
– Cost of solution of system of equations KU = R
Number of degrees of freedom in model,
can be very large (>107 )
Schematic of global stiffness
matrix K (simplified):
(Inside the band, there

are many zeros, and these
zeros are not stored either.)

Cost of elements
– Assume that the sparse solver is used to solve the following
models
Memory  N m
CPU time  N m 2
N  number of degrees of freedom
m  average number of nonzeros per column  N 
Cost of elements, using the sparse solver
1 million 8-node bricks
# equations N Memory CPU time
Block 3M 146 GB 4 hr
Plate 6M 26 GB 11 min
Bar 12 M 12 GB 50 sec
1 million 20-node bricks

Block 12 M 1335 GB 7 days
Plate 21 M 155 GB 2 hr
Bar 36 M 56 GB 8 min
The data in the tables are estimates obtained by scaling the results
of smaller problems computed on an Intel Xeon CPU E3-1225 @
3.10 GHz (4 cores SMP)

Cost of elements, using different solvers
1 million 20-node bricks, 3D-iterative solver
Block 12 M 127 GB 1 hr
Plate 21 M 48 GB 9 min
1 million 20-node bricks, sparse solver

Block 12 M 1335 GB 7 days
Plate 21 M 155 GB 2 hr

2nd order elements and contact
• The 2nd order elements don't work as well in contact as do the 1st order
elements.
• In 3D, the situation is even worse, since the contact forces at corner
nodes point in the "wrong" direction for the 20-node brick. We will see
this later on in the contact lecture.

Effect of element distortions
• In practical analysis the elements are often distorted.
• All elements include the constant stress state, so if the mesh is fine enough,
the solution is accurate.
– All elements contain the displacement shape
ui  A Bx Cy Dz
where x, y, z are the global coordinates and A, B, C, D are constants.

• But what about the shape
ui  A Bx Cy Dz  Ex 2  Fxy  ...  Jz 2
• In 2D, the 9-node quad element contains this shape when the element has an
angular distortion, but the 8-node quad element does not. Therefore the 9-
node element is less sensitive to distortions than the 8-node element. In 3D
the 27-node brick element contains this shape, but the 20-node brick element
does not; so the 27-node brick element is less sensitive to distortions than the
20-node brick element.

• What happens if the element is overdistorted?
– The Jacobian determinant (transformation from global volume to
isoparametric coordinates volume) becomes negative within the
element.
– ADINA Structures prints a warning about overdistorted elements,
however ADINA Structures continues the analysis.
– The results cannot be trusted within the overdistorted elements.

Element locking
• Elements cannot exactly represent the (displacement) shapes in the exact
solution.
• Example: shear locking in 4-node elements.

– Nonzero shear strain leads to nonzero shear stresses, element is too stiff
in bending.

Incompatible modes elements
• Extra shapes are included in 4-node elements (and also in 8-node 3D
elements).
• Incompatible modes work well when elements are square and in bending:

• However, incompatible modes elements are unreliable in general analysis.
– Very sensitive to element distortions
• When an assemblage of long slender elements is stressed under

geometrically nonlinear conditions, the assemblage exhibits spurious modes:

Analysis of a power screw

• The incompatible modes feature does not apply to 3-node triangles and 4-
node tet elements.
• Due to the unreliability of incompatible modes elements in general nonlinear

analysis, the incompatible modes elements are not the default in ADINA
Structures.
• If the structure undergoes significant bending, the structure should be

modeled with higher-order elements, e.g. 9-node quad elements in 2D or 27-
node brick elements in 3D.

Volumetric locking in incompressible materials
• Incompressible materials are those in which the ratio of bulk to shear
modulus is high. Examples are
– Rubber-like materials, including the three-network model
– Plastic materials, when undergoing plastic deformations
• For a linear isotropic material, the bulk to shear modulus ratio becomes high
as the Poisson's ratio approaches 0.5.
• Under plane stress conditions, the element can change thickness to model
the incompressibility. Hence there are no difficulties when using plane
stress elements in the analysis of incompressible materials.
• Plane strain, axisymmetric and 3D elements exhibit volumetric locking in

the analysis of incompressible materials.

Volumetric locking in incompressible materials
• In volumetric locking, the exact incompressible solution has no volumetric
strain everywhere.
• Most finite element shapes have volumetric strain. Considering only finite
element shapes without volumetric strain, there are too few shapes
remaining to give an accurate solution (unless a very fine mesh is taken).
• The remedy is to separately interpolate the pressure (conjugate to the

volumetric strain), using a lower order for the pressure. This is called the
u/p formulation.

Example showing volumetric locking

Example showing volumetric locking

u/p formulation
• By default, the u/p formulation is used whenever any of the following
material models are employed:
Rubberlike materials Inelastic materials

Arruda-Boyce Anand
Eight-chain Creep
Mooney-Rivlin Creep-irradiation
Ogden Creep-variable
Sussman-Bathe Mroz-bilinear
Three-network model Multilinear-plastic-creep
Multilinear-plastic-creep-variable
Plastic-bilinear
Plastic-creep
Plastic-creep-variable
Plastic-cyclic
Plastic-multilinear
Plastic-orthotropic
Viscoelastic

u/p elements
• The following tables give the u/p elements employed when the u/p
formulation is used.
2D elements 3D elements
3/1 triangle 4/1 tet
4/1 quad * 5/1 pyramid
6/3 triangle 6/1 wedge
7/3 triangle * 8/1 brick *
8/3 quad 10/4 tet
9/3 quad * 11/4 tet *
13/4 pyramid
14/4 pyramid
15/4 wedge
* = recommended element 20/4 brick
21/4 brick
21/4 wedge
27/4 brick *

Element recommendations for 3D solids
• If second-order brick elements are to be used, the 27-node element is
preferred over the 20-node element.
– The 27-node element is less sensitive to element distortions.
– The 27-node element is better suited to the u/p formulation (the 27/4
element does not lock, but the 20/4 element locks).
– The 27-node element does not have tensile contact forces.
– But the 27-node element is more expensive, for a given mesh size, than
the 20-node element.
• If second-order tet elements are to be used, usually the 10-node element is

preferred over the 11-node element.
– The 10-node element is much less expensive (5 int pts) than the 11-
node element (17 int pts).
– But in incompressible analysis, the 11 node element is preferred, since
the 11/4 element does not lock.

Membrane elements
• The 2D solid element has a membrane option: 3D plane stress.
• With this option, the element need not initially lie in a plane.
• The element need not be initially flat.
• The element can have from 3 to 9 nodes, just like the other 2D solid
elements.

Assumptions in membrane elements
• Membrane action in the plane of the element, no out-of-plane bending
• Plane stress through the thickness of the element
• Each node has three displacement degrees of freedom.
• As a consequence, unless the element is carrying tensile stress, the element

has no stiffness in the transverse direction.

Local coordinate system
• Stresses and strains in the membrane element are output in the element local
coordinate system.
x in transverse direction
y parallel to N1-N2 line
z  to y , in plane of element
The local system can change

during the analysis, and can
be different from point to
point within the element.

Uses of membrane element
• Modeling of rubber sheets or balloons, modeling of fabrics.
• Modeling of coatings. If thin coating is applied to a free surface, then the

coating stresses can be used to obtain the surface stresses.
Plane stress assumption in

membrane element is consistent
with zero normal traction on free
surface.
Integration points in 3D element

are in interior, integration points
in membrane element are on
surface.

Introduction to shell elements
• A surface element that has stiffness in bending, transverse shear and
membrane action.
• Can be initially flat or warped. Thickness can be constant or varying.

Shell element assumptions
• The fundamental shell element assumptions are
– Material particles that originally lie on a straight line parallel to the
director vector remain on that straight line during deformations.
– The stress in the director vector direction is zero.
• The director vector direction need not be the same as the midsurface normal
direction.
• The following geometric quantities are used:

– The nodal point locations, which usually (but not always) lie on the
shell midsurface
– The director vectors
– The shell thicknesses, measured in the director vector directions

Shell-shell intersections
• The element director vectors might or might not be shared between
neighboring elements:
– Shared between elements, shell is smooth.
– Not shared between elements, neighboring shell elements meet at an
angle.
– Not shared between elements, shell-shell intersection.

Director vector options
• Director vector shared: flat shell, smoothly curved shell
• Director vector not shared: shell-shell intersection

5 and 6 DOF nodes
• The director vector options are controlled by the choice of number of degrees
of freedom for each shell midsurface node:
– 5 DOF node, three translations, two rotations: director vectors are shared
– 6 DOF node, three translations, three rotations: director vectors not shared
5 DOF node 6 DOF node

5 and 6 DOF nodes
• On a flat or smoothly curved shell, there is no stiffness associated with rotations
about the director vector, so we use only 5 DOF nodes with two rotations.
• The AUI automatically sets the number of degrees of freedom at a shell node to
5, unless:
– Shell elements intersect at an angle (> 5o by default).
– The shell node is connected to other structural elements that provide
rotational stiffness, e.g. iso-beams in the modeling of stiffened shells.
– The shell node is connected to rigid links.
– Rotational boundary conditions are assigned to the shell node.
– Prescribed moments are applied to the shell node.
• You can explicitly assign the number of degrees of freedom to the shell node, to
override the AUI.

5 and 6 DOF nodes
No zero stiffness rotations Nodes attached to rigid links

must have 6 DOFs,
zero stiffness rotations

Drilling stiffness options
• MASTER SINGULARITY-STIFFNESS=YES
– Places a small stiffness onto those rotational DOFs with zero stiffness that
are associated with rigid links, beams, pipes, etc.
– This is the default.
• An alternative is to connect the 6 DOF shell nodes to neighboring nodes using

soft beam elements (weld elements), and to not use the singularity-stiffness
option.
Singularity-stiffness Singularity-stiffness
option used option not used
Types of shell elements
• In addition to the cost vs accuracy tradeoffs of the solid elements, there are
additional considerations in the shell elements.
• Need to alleviate shear and membrane locking in these elements.
• The MITC approach is used to reduce the shear and membrane locking.
• Although we list the MITC8 element here, this element is much worse than the
MITC9, and we discourage the use of the MITC8.

Types of shell elements
• The MITC3 is also worse than the MITC4, and should be used as little as
possible. There is ongoing research to improve the MITC3.
• Although ADINA includes the higher-order shell elements, most often the
MITC4 element is used, and this element is the default.

Numerical integration in the shell elements
• Gauss integration is used in the plane of the shell. Either Gauss, Newton-Cotes
or trapezoidal rule integration is used in the out-of-plane direction (default is 2
point Gauss).

Numerical integration in the shell elements
• One reason for including all of the out-of-plane integration point options is to
be able to model the spread of plasticity through the shell thickness.

3D-shell element for large strains
• It is not convenient to use the "zero stress through shell thickness assumption"
in a large strain shell element.
– The material law affects the strain through the thickness.
– In large strain analysis, the strain through the thickness affects the
geometry.
– It is better for all of the strains to be computed from the geometry (and not
from the material law).
• In pure bending, the neutral surface and midsurface no longer coincide.
Pure bending, as seen from the side

• In the 3D-shell element, the director vectors are replaced by control vectors.
The control vectors can change length independently.

• At each node, the degrees of freedom are
– three translations, as usual
– either two or three rotations, as usual
– constant thickness strain
– linear thickness strain
Constant thickness strain affects

both control vectors equally.
Linear thickness strain stretches

one control vector and shrinks
the other.

• Shear locking is alleviated in a manner similar to that used in the MITC4
element, but is generalized for large strains.
• The fully 3D stress-strain material law is used.

– For incompressible materials, the u/p formulation is employed to reduce
volumetric locking.
• The 3D-shell element is available only for the 3- and 4-node elements.
• The 3D-shell element can be used with the linear isotropic elastic, rubber-like
materials and the plastic-cyclic material models.
• Applications of the element include crash/crush of tubes, metal forming, and

analysis of thin rubber components in which bending effects are important.

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Solid and shell elements

Theodore Sussman, Ph.D.

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 1

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 2

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 3

• 2D elements can lie in one of several planes:

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 4

Axisymmetric seal Thin plate with holes, Long tunnel,

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 5

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 6

• The strains and stresses are calculated at the integration points.

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 7

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 8

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 9

Nodal result: u node 351

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 10

• If the command RESULTS-ELEMENT LOCATION=CORNER is used in

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 11

Linear displacement, Quadratic displacement,

Inexpensive, Relatively expensive,

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 12

Linear displacement, Quadratic displacement,

Inexpensive, Relatively expensive,

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 13

Less computationally expensive for a More computationally expensive for a

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 14

For the 27-node element

The cost of assembly is not influenced by the arrangement of

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 15

(Inside the band, there

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 16

1 million 20-node bricks

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 18

1 million 20-node bricks, sparse solver

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 19

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 20

ui  A Bx Cy Dz

where x, y, z are the global coordinates and A, B, C, D are constants.

ui  A Bx Cy Dz  Ex 2  Fxy  ...  Jz 2

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 22

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 23

• Example: shear locking in 4-node elements.

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 24

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 25

• When an assemblage of long slender elements is stressed under

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 26

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 27

• Due to the unreliability of incompatible modes elements in general nonlinear

• If the structure undergoes significant bending, the structure should be

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 28

• Plane strain, axisymmetric and 3D elements exhibit volumetric locking in

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 29

• The remedy is to separately interpolate the pressure (conjugate to the

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 30

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 31

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 32

Rubberlike materials Inelastic materials

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 33

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 34

• If second-order tet elements are to be used, usually the 10-node element is

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 35

• The element need not be initially flat.

© ADINA R&D, Inc, 2016 36