Unified and mixed formulation of the 8-node hexahedral elements by assumed strain method (Q2564520)

A class of `assumed strain' mixed finite element methods based on the Hu-Washizu variational principle is presented. Special care is taken to avoid hourglass modes and shear locking as well as volumetric locking. A unified framework for the 8-node hexahedral solid and thermal as well as thermomechanical coupling elements with uniform reduced integration and selective numerical integration schemes is developed. The approach is simply implemented by a small change of the standard technique and is applicable to arbitrary nonlinear constitutive laws including isotropic and anisotropic material behaviors.