A linear smoothed higher-order CS-FEM for the analysis of notched laminated composites

Abstract Higher-order elements with highly accurate solutions are attractive for stress analysis and stress concentration problems. However, the distorted eight-node serendipity quadrilateral element is known to yield inaccurate results and sub-optimal convergence rate. In this paper, we present a higher-order CS-FEM to alleviate the effect of distorted mesh and guarantee the quality of solutions by employing a linear smoothing technique over eight-node quadratic serendipity elements. The modified strain matrix is computed by the divergence theorem between the nodal shape functions and their derivatives using Taylor's expansion of the weak form. The proposed method eliminates the need for isoparametric mapping and numerical studies demonstrate that the proposed method is insensitive to mesh distortion. The improved accuracy and superior convergence rates are numerically demonstrated with a few benchmark problems. The analysis of the stress concentration around cutouts also proves that the present method has good performance for the laminated composites.