A SIMPLE FINITE ELEMENT-BASED FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF ELASTIC PSEUDO-RIGID BODIES
J.M. Solberg and P. Papadopoulos Int. J. Num. Meth. Engrg., 45, pp. 1297-1314, (1998)

Abstract
This article advocates a general procedure for the numerical investigation of pseudo-rigid bodies. The equations of motion for pseudo-rigid bodies are shown to be mathematically equivalent to those corresponding to certain constant-strain finite element approximations for general deformable continua. A straightforward algorithmic implementation is achieved in a classical finite element framework. Also, a penalty formulation is suggested for modeling contact between pseudo-rigid bodies. Representative planar simulations using a non-linear elastic model demonstrate the predictive capacity of the pseudo-rigid theory, as well as the robustness of the proposed computational procedure.


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