Compatible-strain mixed finite element methods for 3D compressible and incompressible nonlinear elasticity

Abstract

A new family of mixed finite element methods — compatible-strain mixed finite element methods (CSFEMs) — are introduced for three-dimensional compressible and incompressible nonlinear elasticity. A Hu–Washizu-type functional is extremized in order to obtain a mixed formulation for nonlinear elasticity. The independent fields of the mixed formulations are the displacement, the displacement gradient, and the first Piola–Kirchhoff stress. A pressure-like field is also introduced in the case of incompressible elasticity. We define the displacement in H1, the displacement gradient in H(curl), the stress in H(div), and a pressure-like field in L2. In this setting, for improving the stability of the proposed finite element methods without compromising their consistency, we consider some stabilizing terms in the Hu–Washizu-type functional that vanish at its critical points. Using a conforming interpolation, the solution and the test spaces are approximated with some piecewise polynomial subspaces of them. In three dimensions, this requires using the Nédélec edge elements for the displacement gradient and the Nédélec face elements for the stress. This approach results in mixed finite element methods that satisfy the Hadamard jump condition and the continuity of traction on all the internal faces of the mesh. This, in particular, makes CSFEMs quite efficient for modeling heterogeneous solids. We assess the performance of CSFEMs by solving several numerical examples, and demonstrate their good performance for bending problems, for bodies with complex geometries, and in the near-incompressible and the incompressible regimes. Using CSFEMs, one can capture very large strains and accurately approximate stresses and the pressure field. Moreover, in our numerical examples, we do not observe any numerical artifacts such as checkerboarding of pressure, hourglass instability, or locking.