Development of special multi-material elements

A procedure for developing multi-material elements, which are able to eliminate the weakness of the conventional finite elements in determining the stress distributions along the interfaces of different materials, has been proposed. The results obtained by this multi-material element type are in good agreement with those obtained by a modified finite element approach, which employs the least square fitting method to improve the calculation of interfacial stresses. Moreover, these two solutions are superior to the conventional finite element solution. The improvements made by these two modified solutions are entirely due to the imposition of the necessary and sufficient equilibrium and compatibility conditions at the interfaces. It is worth noting that while the two modified finite element approaches provide comparable accuracy, the proposed approach using new multi-material elements is much easier to implement. © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd.link_to_subscribed_fulltex