Mixed formulated 13-node hexahedral elements with rotational degrees of freedom: MR-H13 elements

Abstract

A new three-dimensional 13-node hexahedral element with rotational degrees of freedom, which is designated as MR-H13 element, is presented. The proposed element is established by adding five nodes to one of the six faces of basic 8-node hexahedral element. The new element can be effectively used in the connection between the refined mesh and the coarser mesh. The derivation of the current element in this paper is based on the variational principles in which the rotation and skew-symmetric stress are introduced as independent variables. Numerical examples show that the performance of the new element is satisfactory.