Penalty‐equilibrating approach and an innovative formulation of 4-noded hybrid stress elements

Abstract

The paper presents a penalty-equilibrating approach which is used to enforce the equilibrium constraints to individual hybrid elements so as to optimize the element performance. The approach has been applied successfully to improve the 4-noded hybrid stress membrane element (P-S) by Pian and Sumihara. It turns out that some defects of the P-S element, e.g. the shear locking phenomenon and the inability to pass the MacNeal's bending test, can be overcome and the element performance is significantly improved, without having to add any extra variables to the P-S element or to modify its stress fields.