Comparison of finite element and finite volume methods application in geometrically nonlinear stress analysis

A novel three-dimensional finite volume (FV) procedure is described in deta il for the analysis of geometrically nonlinear problems. The FV procedure i s compared with the conventional finite element (FE) Galerkin approach. FV can be considered to be a particular case of the weighted residual method w ith a unit weighting function, where in the FE Galerkin method we use the s hape function as weighting function. A Fortran code has been developed base d on the finite volume cell vertex formulation. The formulation is tested o n a number of geometrically nonlinear problems. In comparison with FE, the results reveal that FV can reach the FE results in a higher mesh density. ( C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.