COORDINATE-FREE ISOPARAMETRIC ELEMENTS

Formulations for general solid elements are presented which do not rel y explicitly on an arbitrary global coordinate system, and which are i ndependent of the dimension of the embedding space. Abstract data type s corresponding to points, vectors and tensors replace matrix represen tations, allowing the coordinate-free nature of the derivation to be c arried over into the implementation. The formulations are oriented pri marily toward applications involving general geometric and material no nlinearities, iterative solution algorithms and element-by-element imp lementations, but traditional linear applications are considered as we ll.