ADAPTIVE MESH REFINEMENT USING PIECEWISE-LINEAR SHAPE FUNCTIONS BASEDON THE BLENDING FUNCTION-METHOD

Use of quadrilateral elements for finite element mesh refinement can l ead either to so-called 'irregular' meshes or the necessity of adjustm ents between finer and coarser parts of the mesh necessary. In the cas e of 'irregular' meshes, constraints have to be introduced in order to maintain continuity of the displacements. Introduction of finite elem ents based on blending function interpolation shape functions using pi ecewise boundary interpolation avoids these problems. This paper intro duces an adaptive refinement procedure for these types of elements. Th e refinement is an h-method. Error estimation is performed using the Z ienkiewicz-Zhu method. The refinement is controlled by a switching fun ction representation. The method is applied to the plane stress proble m. Numerical examples are given to show the efficiency of the methodol ogy.