A semi-analytical method with a system of decoupled ordinary differential equations for three-dimensional elastostatic problems

In this paper, a new semi-analytical method is presented for modeling of three-dimensional (3D) elastostatic problems. For this purpose, the domain boundary of the problem is discretized by specific subparametric elements, in which higher-order Chebyshev mapping functions as well as special shape functions are used. For the shape functions, the property of Kronecker Delta is satisfied for displacement function and its derivatives, simultaneously. Furthermore, the first derivatives of shape functions are assigned to zero at any given node. Employing the weighted residual method and implementing Clenshaw-Curtis quadrature, coefficient matrices of equations' system are converted into diagonal ones, which results in a set of decoupled ordinary differential equations for solving the whole system. In other words, the governing differential equation for each degree of freedom (DOF) becomes independent from other DOFs of the domain. To evaluate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method, which is called Decoupled Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method (DSBFEM), four benchmark problems of 3D elastostatics are examined using a few numbers of DOFs. The numerical results of the DSBFEM present very good agreement with the results of available analytical solutions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.