Average strain strategy for finite elements

This paper describes an average strain/gradient strategy. Although the procedure can be applied to any element, the specific case of the 8-noded, hexahedral element is considered when presenting the approach. The performance of one-dimensional elements, and of 4- and 8-noded quadrilateral elements, is examined for problems, for which closed-form solutions exist. It is shown that the average strain formulation yields stiffness matrices that are more flexible than those obtained via ‘exact’ integration.