A FINITE ELEMENT FORMULATION FOR 3-D CONTINUA USING THE CO-ROTATIONAL TECHNIQUE

The co-rotational technique is described for the three-dimensional analysis of continua. The technique exploits the proven technology of the best continua elements for linear analysis which are embedded into a formulation that applies an element-attached local co-ordinate frame that continuously moves and rotates with the element. The geometric non-linearity is then incorporated via the rotation of this local system. The method uses similar procedures to those recently described for 2-D continua elements but introduces concepts from a more conventional ‘continuum mechanics’ approach. The general framework for the co-rotational procedure is kept. However, a much neater formulation is derived, which readily allows the extension from two to three dimensions