Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 44 (2008) 797 -- 803

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Finite Elements in Analysis and Design

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A nearest-nodes finite element method with local multivariate Lagrange interpolation

Yunhua Luo
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada R3T 5V6

A R T I C L E

I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 5 July 2007 Received in revised form 6 May 2008 Accepted 23 June 2008 Available online 31 July 2008 Keywords: Nearest-nodes finite element method Meshless methods Finite element method Local multivariate Lagrange interpolation

In the proposed nearest-nodes finite element method (NN-FEM), finite elements are used only for numerical integration; while shape functions are constructed in a similar way as in meshless methods, i.e. by using a set of nodes that are the nearest to a concerned quadrature point. Some of the nodes may be from adjacent elements. A recently developed local multivariate Lagrange interpolation method is used to construct shape functions. In the above way, the proposed NN-FEM inherits most of the merits from both the finite element method and meshless methods. The major attractive features of NN-FEM include: analysis results are insensitive to element distortion; a crack can propagate along an arbitrary path; with element adjacency information, time spent on searching nearest nodes is much shorter than that used by a meshless method for identifying nodes covered under an influence domain. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The finite element method (FEM) [13] has a number of merits compared with other numerical methods. Compared with the newly emerged meshless or meshfree methods, one big advantage of the FEM is that it does not need extra time to construct shape functions, as the shape functions for a specific element type are pre-defined. Therefore, the FEM is computationally more efficient. Although there are still issues related to finite element meshes and their generation, it is with a mesh that the FEM can give a better approximation to a complex problem domain than any other numerical methods, which is crucial to improve accuracy of numerical solutions [4,5]. As reviewed in [6], although generating a valid mesh is not a big deal if an underlying CAD geometrical model is available, tuning the quality of a mesh to make all elements in ideal shapes is very time consuming, as it usually involves an optimization process. Element distortion is another well-known issue of the classical FEM. Aiming at resolving issues arising from using a finite element mesh, a new category of methods, collectively called meshless or meshfree methods, e.g. [722] among many others, have been developed in recent years. One big advantage of meshless methods is their flexibility in constructing shape functions. In a meshless method, cells for numerical integration and nodes for constructing shape functions are completely independent. Connectivity between nodes is not defined or loosely defined. Meshless methods are thus more attractive in dealing with geometric discontinuities,

Tel.: +1 204 474 6899. E-mail address: luoy@cc.umanitoba.ca.

moderate deformation, etc. Nevertheless, meshless methods also have their own disadvantages, and most of these disadvantages are related to meshlessno connectivity between nodes. In a meshless method, adjacency information between nodes is needed in constructing shape functions and in adaptation, but it is not defined or stored. Extra computational time must be spent in looking for neighbor nodes. The amount of extra computational time is not bounded within a linear order of total nodal number. There are also some other issues in meshless methods to be resolved. For example, how to optimally put nodes onto the boundary of a complex geometric domain to reduce error from geometry approximation is still an open question. As the nodes and cells are independent to each other, another issue is how to make the size of integration cells consistent with the density of node distribution. In simulating large deformation such as metal forming, two material particles that are near to each other at current time instant may be far apart from each other at the next time instant. Therefore, meshless methods have the same issue as in the FEM, they need to update adjacency information between nodes from time to time, to construct high-quality shape functions. Therefore, both of the FEM and meshless methods have their pros and cons. One current trend is to develop new numerical methods, e.g. [11,2333] among others, that can combine the merits from both the FEM and meshless methods, and at the same time to avoid their demerits. In this paper, the classical FEM and newly emerged meshless methods are combined in such a way: finite elements are only used for numerical integration; while shape functions are constructed by a recently developed local multivariate Lagrange interpolation method [34], in a similar way as in meshless methods, i.e. by using a set of nodes that are the nearest to a concerned quadrature point, and some of the nodes may be from adjacent elements.

0168-874X/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.finel.2008.06.004

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The proposed FEM is thus called nearest-nodes finite element method (NN-FEM). As will be demonstrated in the following sections by derivation and numerical examples, with the above strategy, NN-FEM inherits the major merits of the classical FEM and meshless methods. The layout of this paper is given in the following: in Section 2, the proposed NN-FEM is described in detail; the local multivariate Lagrange interpolation method is described in Section 3; results of numerical investigations are reported in Section 4, followed by concluding remarks in Section 5. 2. The nearest-nodes finite element method (NN-FEM) The issues related to element distortion in the classical FEM arise from the restriction that only nodes belonging to an element are used for constructing shape functions of that element. One big advantage of this restriction is that with the aid of a local coordinate system and a set of normalized element coordinates, the shape functions of a specific element type can be pre-defined. Therefore, there is no need to solve a local problem. Nevertheless there are also disadvantages arising from this restriction. Two of them are obvious. One is that the number of nodes available from a single element for constructing higher order shape functions is limited. Furthermore the use of edge or interior nodes is inconvenient for mesh generation, element implementation and mesh adaptation. The other even worse disadvantage is that if the shape of an element is distorted, the nodes of that element are also at unfavorable positions for constructing high quality shape functions. To obtain high quality shape functions, all elements in a mesh must be in good shapes. In the NN-FEM proposed in the following, a finite element is used only for numerical integration, while shape functions are constructed in a similar way as in meshless methods, i.e. by using a set of specified number of nodes that are the nearest to a concerned quadrature point. In principle, the proposed NN-FEM is applicable to all fields where the classical FEM is workable. In the following, NN-FEM is described in the content of solid mechanics and based on the principle of minimum potential energy. Let be an open bounded domain, and { i (i = 1, 2, . . . , N)} be a subdivision of , representing N finite elements; i is the ith subdivision or element; i j = (if i = j) and = N i=1 i . The total strain energy stored in is obtained by summing up contributions from all the elements,
N

Integration point

Nodes used in constructing shape functions at the integration point

Fig. 1. Nearest-nodes FEM.

and so is the strain energy density. After numerical integration is conducted, the strain energy in an element is also represented by nodal unknowns. The Hessian matrix of the strain energy with respect to nodal unknowns is the element stiffness matrix. Therefore, in calculating an element stiffness matrix, what we essentially need are the estimations of displacements and their derivatives at quadrature points over the element. Based on interpolation theory, with a given set of nodes and corresponding function values at the nodes, the best estimation for the function at a concerned point is obtained by interpolation using a subset of nodes that are the nearest to that point. 2.1. Strategy for constructing shape functions With the above deduction, we take a different strategy for constructing shape functions in NN-FEM. Unlike in the classical FEM, where shape functions are constructed once for a whole element only using nodes belonging to that element, in the proposed NN-FEM, shape functions are constructed for each quadrature point, using a specified number of nodes that are nearest to a concerned quadrature point. Some of those nodes may not belong to the element where the concerned quadrature point is located. A typical scenario is shown in Fig. 1, where an element stiffness matrix for the shaded element is being calculated. For the quadrature point denoted +, a number of nearest nodes, marked as dark circles in the figure, are selected for constructing shape functions. Among those nodes, not all the nodes belong to the shaded element; and one node of the shaded element is not included as it is not near enough to the concerned quadrature point. For the next quadrature point, the same procedure is repeated and the selected nodes may or may not be the same as the previous ones. Even before conducting any numerical investigation, it can be expected that the quality of shape functions obtained in the above way is mainly determined by the locations of selected nodes; it has very little to do with the shape of an element. The shape change of an element may shift quadrature points around, but it does not obstruct selecting the nearest nodes for a concerned quadrature point. As the number of nodes used for constructing shape functions is specified, the order of the resulting shape functions is either known or can be estimated. A proper numerical quadrature order can thus be determined. One necessary requirement in NN-FEM is that a consistent numerical quadrature order must be used over a whole

=
i=1

(1)

where i is the strain energy stored in element i

i=
i

ei (x) d i

(i = 1, 2, . . . , N)

(2)

In Eq. (2), ei (x) is the strain energy density and it is a function of spatial position x. The integration in Eq. (2) is usually conducted numerically, i.e.
Pi i = Ai p=1

wp ei (xp )

(3)

where Ai is the area of element i; Pi the number of quadrature points over the element; ei (xp ) the value of ei at p-th quadrature point and wp is the corresponding weight. The strain energy density, ei (x), is a scalar product of the stress tensor and the strain tensor; it contains the first derivative of displacements. The displacements are the primary unknown fields to be found. After introducing shape functions, the displacements are represented by nodal unknowns, i.e. nodal displacements in this case,

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element. Therefore, for each quadrature point in an element, the same number of nearest nodes must be selected for constructing shape functions. 2.2. Assembly of global stiffness matrix One step in the FEM is to assemble element stiffness matrices to the global stiffness matrix. In the classical FEM, the assembly is actually done in two steps. First, contributions from all quadrature points over an element are put together in an element stiffness matrix; and then the element stiffness matrix is assembled into the global stiffness matrix. For the NN-FEM, the same procedure can be applied, a more efficient way is to assemble contribution from a quadrature point directly into the global stiffness matrix. This is explained in the following. The stain energy contribution from the p-th quadrature point in i-th element is denoted ip , and the corresponding contribution to the global stiffness matrix is

firstlayer adjacency

secondlayer adjacency

K ip =

j2

ip ip ju2

Fig. 2. Element adjacency.

(4) (4) For each element Ek in A1 , repeat Step (2); all nodes in the first i layer adjacency are thus identified. (5) By repeating Steps (2)(4), nodes in second and higher layer adjacency can be identified. 2.4. Construction of shape functions for a quadrature point near a crack In addition to element distortion due to large deformation, simulation of crack propagation is another difficulty for the classical FEM; while it is another merit for meshless methods. The easy treatment of a crack and its propagation with a meshless method is again attributed to the flexibility of constructing shape functions. This merit of meshless methods is inherited by NN-FEM, as a similar strategy is adopted for constructing shape functions. There are two possible scenarios in simulating crack propagation, an existing crack and a new crack. For an existing crack, element nodes are already aligned with crack edges in mesh generation, Fig. 3(a), and all elements are complete. For a newly developed crack, some elements may be cut through or partially by a crack path, Fig. 3(b). On a quadrature point-by-point base, the two scenarios can be treated in the same way: in selection of nodes for constructing shape functions at a quadrature point, in addition to the nearest criterion, the visibility criterion [36] or any other similar criterion is also applied. If the visibility criterion is used, the line segment connecting a quadrature point and a candidate node should not intersect with any crack path. The two sets of selected nodes for quadrature point + and for quadrature point x are marked, respectively, by empty circles and dark circles in Fig. 3. They are on different sides of the crack path. For a newly developed crack, a more efficient way is to align element nodes with crack edges which will be addressed in a separate paper, but even without doing that, a following step of analysis can still be continued. 3. Local multivariate Lagrange interpolation In principle, most techniques used in meshless methods for constructing shape functions can be modified and applied in NN-FEM. In this paper, a recently developed local multivariate Lagrange interpolation method [34] is adopted for constructing shape functions. The multivariate Lagrange interpolation method has the following attractive features: it can be used to interpolate irregularly distributed data points; it does not need to solve local problems; if used for constructing shape functions, the obtained shape functions satisfy the Kronecker delta condition, and they have the reproducing properties.

where uip is a vector consisting of nodal unknown displacements from nodes involved in constructing shape functions at quadrature point p of element i. The entry indices of K ip in the global stiffness matrix are given by the corresponding degree-of-freedom assigned to the involved nodes. 2.3. Searching nearest nodes by element adjacency With nodal connectivity defined, search of the nearest nodes for a concerned quadrature point in NN-FEM is much easier than in a meshless method. Nevertheless in a typical implementation of the classical FEM, only an element-node relation is defined, that is, if provided with an element label, nodes belonging to that element can be easily extracted. However, in NN-FEM, to construct shape functions for a concerned quadrature point, some of the nearest nodes may be from adjacent elements, cf. Fig. 1. Certainly, the nodes from adjacent elements can be found by traversing over all elements, but that is obviously not efficient. A more efficient way is to expand the definition of nodal connectivity to include element adjacency information. An advanced mesh database such as the Algorithm Oriented Mesh Database (AOMD) [35] can provide any wanted information about element adjacency and is definitely workable. But for NN-FEM, only a simplified version is needed. What is additionally needed in NN-FEM is a node-element relation, that is, if a node is picked up, all elements connected to this node can be extracted. If the nodeelement relation is defined, any number of nodes from adjacent elements can be quickly found by alternately applying the elementnode and node-element relations. This procedure is illustrated in Fig. 2 and described in the following. (1) Starting for element Ei , where the currently concerned quadra ture point, xp , is located, xp Ei . The quadrature point is labeled as x in Fig. 2. (2) Apply element-node relation to extract all nodes belonging to element Ei . The node set is denoted Ni = {nj (j = 1, 2, . . . , Ni ); nj i }, where n and Ni are, respectively, the j-th node and the total E number of nodes in element Ei . (3) For each node nj in Ni , use node-element relation to find out all elements connected to it; the common set of elements connecting to all nodes in Ni is represented by A1 = {Ek (k = 1, 2, . . . , Ai ); Ek i Ni }. Elements collected in A1 are in the first layer adjacency to i element Ei .
j

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Nodes for constructing shape functions at the quadrature point + quadrature point + x quadrature point x quadrature point Newly developed cracck Nodes for constructing shape functions at the quadrature point + + quadrature point +

Nodes for constructing shape functions at the quadrature point x

Nodes for constructing shape functions at the quadrature point x

Fig. 3. Selection of nearest nodes for a quadrature point near a crack: (a) an existing crack; (b) a new crack.

shape functions are obtained

Selected nodes Farthest node from the evaluation point

i (X) =
where

i (X) n =1

(X)

i (X)

(i = 1, 2, . . . , n)

(6)

S=
Evaluation point

(X)
=1

(7)

With the Lagrange shape functions in Eq. (6), the multivariate approximate polynomial is constructed as f (X) f (X) =
n i=1

Fig. 4. Selected nodes for constructing Lagrange shape functions.

i (X)fi

(8)

In the following, the local multivariate Lagrange interpolation is described. Let f (X) be a scalar function of vector X. Vector X consists of d variables defined over domain Rd . For d=1, X =[x]; d=2, X = [x, y]T ; d=3, X =[x, y, z]T ; etc. The set P={(X 1 , f1 ), (X 2 , f2 ), . . . , (X N , fN )} contains N data points representatively scattered over domain . An approximate function f (X) in polynomial form is to be constructed around an arbitrary evaluation point X. To this end, n data points, p = {(X 1 , f1 ), (X 2 , f2 ), . . . , (X n , fn )}, are selected from P, p P, Fig. 4. These data points form a patch and the number n is called patch size. The distance between the evaluation point and the farthest node in the patch is called the radius of the patch, and it is denoted r. Patch size is determined by the desired polynomial order, and it is less or even much less than the total number of data points, N. For this reason, the method described in the following is a local approximation method. The n data points in a patch are so selected that they are the nearest ones to the concerned evaluation point. To construct the multivariate polynomial, the conventional Lagrange basis polynomials are first transformed into
n i (X) =

The approximate derivatives of f (X) are obtained by differentiating the polynomial in Eq. (8), i.e. n j
(X) jf (X) jf (X) i = fi (9) j j j i=1 ( = x, y, z) From Eq. (6), the first-order derivatives of the Lagrange shape functions are calculated as

j
i (X) 1 j i (X) i (X) = S, j S j S2
where
n =1

( = x, y, z)

(10)

S, =

j (X) j
n (X X )T (X i X ) i j X X 2 T i =1 (X i X ) (X i X ) j

(11)

and j i (X) n = j j=1

j=i

(X X )T (X i X )

T =1 (X i X ) (X i X ) =i

(i = 1, 2, . . . , n)

(5)

X X 2 = (X X )T (X X ) i i i j j j ( i = xi , yi , zi ) ( j = xj , yj , zj )

=i,j

(12)

The multivariate Lagrange basis polynomials in Eq. (5) are called multivariate Lagrange shape functions in the following discussion. It can be checked that they will degenerate back to the conventional Lagrange basis polynomials if applied to univariate functions. The transformed Lagrange shape functions still satisfy the Kronecker delta condition, but the reproducing properties are lost. To recover the reproducing properties, the Lagrange shape functions in Eq. (5) are further reformed by normalization and a set of new Lagrange

Higher order derivatives can be obtained by the chain rule, but in this paper we only need approximate function and its first-order derivatives. Continuity and reproducing properties of the multivariate Lagrange interpolation method has been studied in [34]. Two sets of shape functions constructed using different number of nodes as shown in Figs. 5(a) and 6 are plotted in Figs. 5 and 7. The shape functions were obtained in the way described in Section 2.1 using a set of given nodes. From the figures, it can be observed that, both the shape functions and their first-order derivatives are continuous.

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1 node distribution
i

1 x
i x
i y

2 x

3 x

Fig. 5. Shape functions constructed from four nodes: (a) node distributions; (b)
i ; (c) j
i / jx; (d) j
i / jy.

1 y

2 y

3 y

Fig. 7. Shape functions and their first-order derivatives constructed from nine nodes: (a)
1 ; (b)
2 ; (c)
3 ; (d) j
1 / jx; (e) j
2 / jx; (f) j
3 / jx; (g) j
1 / jy; (h) j
2 / jy; (i) j
3 / jy.

2b

Fig. 6. Distribution of nine nodes (

1 ;
2 ;
3 ).

4. Numerical investigations and results In this section, results of numerical investigations on the proposed NN-FEM are reported. The conducted numerical investigations include: (1) Convergence of NN-FEM. (2) Effect of element distortion. (3) Crack analysis. 4.1. Convergence of NN-FEM
Fig. 8. Cantilever beam and meshes.

Convergence of the proposed NN-FEM was studied by a benchmark problem. A cantilever beam under an end shear force, Fig. 8(a), was analyzed as a plane stress problem. The beam has the following geometric and material parameters: length L = 10, height 2b = 2, thickness t = 1, elasticity modulus E = 1000. 0, Poisson's ratio = 0. 3. The parameters have consistent units. The initial uniform mesh, Fig. 8(b), was progressively refined, and two of them are displayed in Figs. 8(c) and (d). The obtained results are plotted in Fig. 9. For comparison purpose, results from the FEM and element-free Galerkin (EFG) method

are also displayed. The FEM results were produced using Element PLANE82 from the ANSYS element library. PLANE82 is a second order plane stress element with six element nodes. A fair base was tried for the comparison, that is, for all the compared methods they have the same order of shape functions, a similar number of total nodes, etc. Nevertheless, as a weight function is usually used in constructing shape functions in EFG, shape functions in EFG actually have a higher order. From the obtained results, it can be observed that

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Y. Luo / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 44 (2008) 797 -- 803 Table 1 Transverse displacement at the free end of cantilever Polynomial order Regular mesh (a) Distorted mesh (b) Analytical solution (beam) 1 0.330582 0.327921 0.516540 2 0.516493 0.516413

Normalized transverse displacement at free end

1 0.95 0.9 0.85 0.8 0.75 0.7 0.65

NNFEM, PO=1 EFG, BO=2 PLANE2 (ANSYS) NNFEM,PO=2

200

400

600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 Number of nodes

Fig. 9. h-Convergence (BObase order in MLS, POpolynomial order in NN-FEM).

regular mesh

Fig. 11. A plate with an edge crack: (a) boundary and loading conditions; (b) undeformed configuration.

distorted mesh
Fig. 10. Regular and distorted meshes: (a) regular mesh; (b) distorted mesh.

compared with the EFG method, the proposed NN-FEM has a similar convergence rate. Both EFG and NN-FEM behave better than the FEM. It was also found that although by increasing the order of local polynomials, NN-FEM can have a gain in convergence rate, but the bandwidth of global stiffness matrix also becomes larger. Therefore more storage and memory are demanded and more solution time is needed. Based on a comprehensive consideration and balance between convergence rate, computational time and memory consumption, second-order local polynomials would be the most efficient for NN-FEM. 4.1.1. Effects of mesh distortion Insensitiveness to element distortion is one big advantage of the proposed NN-FEM. This advantage was verified by specially devised meshes. The cantilever beam in Fig. 8(a) was re-analyzed with the two meshes shown in Figs. 10(a) and (b). The two meshes have the same number of nodes, and these nodes have exactly the same coordinates in the two meshes. Mesh (a) in Fig. 10 is a regular mesh, all elements have a good shape; while some elements in mesh (b) are severely distorted, their shapes are extremely flat and the three element nodes are nearly on the same straight line. The obtained results are given in Table 1. It can be seen that differences between results yielded by the regular mesh and by the distorted mesh are quite small. The slight differences between the results are due to that the positions of quadrature points are different in the two meshes. The results demonstrate that NN-FEM is nearly not affected by element distortion.

deformed configuration

effective stress

Fig. 12. Deformed configuration and effective stress: (a) deformed configuration; (b) effective stress.

4.2. Crack analysis Ability in dealing with geometric discontinuities and their development without any constraint is another big advantage of the proposed NN-FEM. As described in Section 2.4, the treatment of an existing crack and that of a new crack are in principle the same. The only difference is that for a new crack some nodes may not be aligned with crack edges, which will be dealt with in a separate paper. In this test, a plate with an existing edge crack was analyzed, Fig. 11(a). The aim of this test is mainly to check the applicability of the visibility criterion in NN-FEM. The undeformed mesh is shown in Fig. 11(b). Applicability of the visibility criterion in NN-FEM is confirmed by the deformed configuration and the plot of effective stress given in

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Fig. 12. The displacements across the crack are obviously discontinuous and the predicted location of stress concentration is as expected. 5. Discussions and concluding remarks In the proposed NN-FEM, the classical FEM and newly emerged meshless methods are combined in such a way: finite elements are only used for numerical integration; while shape functions are constructed in a similar way as in meshless methods, i.e. by using a set of nodes that are the nearest to a concerned quadrature point. Some of the nodes may be from adjacent elements. The recently developed local multivariate Lagrange interpolation method is used for constructing shape functions. In the above way, the proposed NN-FEM inherits most of the merits from both of the FEM and meshless methods. More specifically, NN-FEM has the following attractive merits: The shape of finite elements can be arbitrary, e.g. triangles, quadrilaterals, arbitrary polygons, or any hybrid mesh for a 2-D case. Finite elements can be extremely distorted. The minimum requirement on a mesh in NN-FEM is that elements are not overlapped to each other and not self-penetrated, to avoid difficulty in numerical integration. The quality of shape functions is solely dependent on the locations of element nodes. Therefore NN-FEM is nearly not affected by element shapes as shown by numerical results. Compared with meshless methods, NN-FEM can take the advantages of more advanced mesh generation techniques. Problem domains with very complex geometry can be well represented by finite element meshes, which is not so easily handled in other numerical methods. The order of shape functions can be arbitrarily high, as long as enough element nodes are available. Therefore, p-version of adaptation can be easily implemented in NN-FEM. A crack can develop in an arbitrary path in NN-FEM, as in the selection of nodes for constructing shape functions, the visibility criterion can be applied. As the number of used nodes is specified, the order of constructed shape functions is either known or can be easily estimated; therefore a consistent numerical integration order can be easily selected. With element adjacency information, time spent in search of nearest nodes for constructing shape functions is much shorter than that in meshless methods used for identifying nodes covered under a domain of influence. References
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