FE PLANE-STRESS ANALYSIS INCORPORATING ARBITRARY 3D LARGE-STRAIN CONSTITUTIVE MODELS

The objective of this work is to develop an element technology to reco ver the plane stress response without any plane stress specific modifi cations in the large strain regime. Therefore, the essential feature o f the proposed element formulation is an interface to arbitrary three- dimensional constitutive laws. The easily implemented and computationa l cheap four-noded element is characterized by coarse mesh accuracy an d the satisfaction of the plane stress constraint in a weak sense. A n umber of example problems involving arbitrary small and large strain c onstitutive models demonstrate the excellent performance of the concep t pursued in this work.