Three stress-based triangular elements.

To obtain proper stresses , three new triangular elements are formulated in this study. First, a complementary energy functional is used within an element for the analysis of plane problems. In this energy manifestation, the Airy stress function will be applied as a functional variable. Then, some basic analytical solutions are assigned for the stress functions. These trial functions are matched with each element number of degrees of freedom. The result is a number of equations with anonymous constants. Subsequently, according to the principle of minimum complementary energy, the unknown constants can be expressed in terms of displacements. Finally, this system can be rewritten in terms of the nodal displacement. In this way, three new triangular elements are formulated. To validate the results, extensive numerical studies are performed. The findings clearly demonstrate accuracies of structural displacements as well as stresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]