The TET 20 and TEA 8 Elements for the Matrix Displacement Method

Abstract

Following on from the LUMINA and HERMES elements discussed in TN’s 11 and 12, this note analyses two further three-dimensional elements outlined in ref. 1. These new elements possess the desirable features of completeness and consequent invariance of the polynomials for the displacement fields. It has been shown in ref. 2 and stated in ref. 1 that third order complete polynomials yielding a second order or parabolic strain distribution fit into a tetrahedron element with 20 nodal points and 60 degrees of freedom, denoted within ASKA as TET 20 (Fig. 1).