NUMERICAL REDUCED MINIMIZATION THEORY FOR BEAM ELEMENTS UNDER NON-UNIFORM ISOPARAMETRIC MAPPING

In this paper, the effects of various numerical integrations on the behaviour of Co-continuous beam elements under non-uniform isoparametric mapping are investigated by using numerical reduced minimization theory. The theory shows that stress recovery can be achieved by sampling stresses at the optimal integration points once a reduced integration is employed. It rationalizes the continued acceptance of the conventional reduced integration of constrained strain energy as one of remedies for locking due to spurious constraint