A3 Shear Locking

3.1 General Remarks

Already in the early days of finite element analysis in the sixties it had been recognized that
finite elements based upon the virtual work principle (displacement method) may provide
inaccurate results and exhibit slow convergence. In certain limit cases predictions for dis-
placements and stresses might even be completely useless. The phenomenon is characterized
by a severe underestimation of the displacements, i.e. the structural response is too stiff. Since
the late seventies the term locking is used, reflecting the graphical perception that the structure
locks itself against deformations.
This chapter focuses on shear locking (in its two occurrences as in-plane shear locking and
transverse shear locking, which are strongly related). Other locking effects, like membrane
locking or volumetric locking, and a detailed account on techniques to formulate locking-free
elements are treated in the course on Finite Element Technology.

3.2 What is Locking?

Unfortunately, a unique, rigorous definition of locking does not seem to exist. From a most
simple an general point of view one could state that
Locking means the effect of a reduced rate of convergence for coarse meshes in
dependence of a critical parameter.
For example, in the case of transverse shear locking of plate elements this parameter is the
slenderness of the plate, in volumetric locking it is the bulk modulus. An optimal rate of con-
vergence, as predicted by mathematical error analysis for elements of a certain polynomial
order, is not achieved until the element size falls below a certain limit. As this limit is often
beyond available computer capacities there is a strong interest to avoid such locking effects.

3.3 Rate of Convergence and Accuracy

For practical applications the most important efficiency aspect of a certain finite element
scheme is coarse mesh accuracy. This means that we want the absolute error to be small at
low computational expense. Rate of convergence, however, is also important, for instance
when adaptive methods are used. It specifies the rate at which certain results approach the
exact solution with mesh refinement. The basic ideas are discussed in this section with the
help of simple numerical examples, comparing three different type of beam elements, namely
! Bernoulli beam elements with cubic shape functions,
! linear Timoshenko type beam elements and
! Timoshenko beam elements with reduced integration.
We are analyzing the results obtained for a beam with length l , thickness t and material pa-
rameters E = 10000, = 0 . The beam is clamped at both ends and subject to a distributed
x
force q( x) = 100 t 3 1 cos . The computations are carried out using n elements of
20
equal size.

1
 1.0E+01
relative
error
1.0E+00

1.0E-01

1.0E-02
O (1)
1.0E-03

1.0E-04

1.0E-05
O (2)
1.0E-06

1.0E-07

1.0E-08
O (4)
1.0E-09
1 10 100 d.o.f. 1000

M (bending moment)
Q (transverse shear force)
W (strain energy)

Fig. 3.1: Bernoulli beam elements, thick beam

Figure 3.1 shows the results obtained with cubic Bernoulli beam elements. More precisely,
the relative error is plotted versus the number of degrees of freedom for bending moments and
transverse shear forces (evaluated in the center of the beam) as well as strain energy. The first
observation that can be made is that rate of convergence for all quantities is almost independ-
ent of the number of degrees of freedom. Results for displacements and rotations are not
shown, because these values are exact at the nodes. This is due to the fact that the stiffness
matrix of a Bernoulli beam element is exact.
Strain energy exhibits 4th order convergence which complies with what mathematical theory
predicts. This means that increasing the number of degrees of freedom by a factor a reduces
the error by a factor a 4 . The thin, black line labeled O(4) does not represent any numerical
result but is a fourth order function introduced manually in order to help visualizing the rate
of convergence. Note that the error curve for the strain energy is parallel to this line almost in
the entire range.
Similarly, it can be stated that rate of convergence of the bending moments is of second order
and transverse shear forces converge by order one. All these results are optimal in the
mathematical sense. This is the case because Bernoulli beam elements are locking-free. If
locking occurs, rates of convergence will not be optimal in the case of coarse meshes. This
can be seen in Figure 3.2, showing the results obtained with linear Timoshenko beam ele-
ments.

2
 1.0E+02
relative
error
1.0E+01

1.0E+00

1.0E-01

1.0E-02
O (1)
1.0E-03

1.0E-04

1.0E-05
O (2)
1.0E-06

1.0E-07
1 10 100 1000 d.o.f. 10000

w (displacement) M (bending moment)

(rotation) Q (transverse shear force)
W (strain energy)

Fig. 3.2: Timoshenko beam elements, thick beam

According to theory, optimal rate of convergence for displacements, rotations and strain en-
ergy is 2. The corresponding curves are practically coincident and show the optimal rate of
convergence on the right side of the diagram. For coarse meshes, however (number of degrees
of freedom lower than 10) the curves are almost horizontal, meaning that the result is hardly
improved with mesh refinement. Results for transverse shear forces are even getting worse at
the beginning. The optimal rate of convergence for both bending moments and transverse
shear forces is 1 and it is attained for fine meshes only. Note that the absolute error, especially
for transverse shear forces, is relatively high also in the area where optimal convergence can
be observed (compare the values to the ones obtained with Bernoulli beam elements!).
The situation is getting significantly worse if the setup of the problem is changed to a thin
beam ( l t = 100 ). The results are shown in Figure 3.3. The range within which the error re-
mains practically constant (or even gets larger in the case of Q) has extended until approxi-
mately 100 degrees of freedom. Consequently, the absolute values of the error in the region
where optimal rates of convergence can be observed are higher than before.
The phenomenon that accuracy depends on the problem setup (here slenderness of the struc-
ture) is typical for locking. In the case at hand the elements start to behave well (i.e. to stop
locking) as soon as the slenderness of one individual element reaches approximately 1. This
is the reason that for thinner structures more elements are needed to obain the same accuracy.

3
 1.0E+02
relative
error
1.0E+01

1.0E+00

1.0E-01

1.0E-02
O (1)
1.0E-03

1.0E-04

1.0E-05
O (2)
1.0E-06

1.0E-07
1 10 100 1000 d.o.f. 10000

w (displacement) M (bending moment)

(rotation) Q (transverse shear force)
W (strain energy)

Fig. 3.3: Timoshenko beam elements, thin beam

It is known that reduced integration can help to remove transverse shear locking. In contrast
to most two- and three-dimensional cases this does not lead to spurious zero energy modes in
the case of Timoshenko beam elements. The results obtained for both the thick and thin
beams with a Timoshenko beam element using one-point Gauss integration are put together in
Figure 3.4.
There is no perceptible difference between both results, although the thin beam has turned out
to be the harder problem when full integration is used (see results above). Moreover, all
quantities show optimal rates of convergence throughout the whole range, independent of the
number of elements. Reduced integrated Timoshenko beam elements can thus be identified as
being locking-free also for very thin beams. Their convergence is said to be uniform with re-
spect to the parameter l t (or just t ) because rate of convergence is independent of this pa-
rameter.
The fact that rate of convergence is still smaller than for Bernoulli elements is due to the cir-
cumstance that linear shape functions instead of cubic ones are used. Increasing the order of
interpolation for Timoshenko beam elements will also increase the optimal rates of conver-
gence. Displacements of four-node elements with cubic shape functions will thus also have a
convergence order of 4. Often, however, practical considerations demand the formulation of
low order elements. In most commercial codes elements with linear shape functions are the
work horses for a wide class of problems.

4
1.0E+02
relative
error
1.0E+01
l
= 10
1.0E+00 t
1.0E-01

1.0E-02
O (1)
1.0E-03

1.0E-04

1.0E-05
O (2)
1.0E-06

1.0E-07
1 10 100 1000 d.o.f. 10000

1.0E+02
relative
error
1.0E+01 l
= 100
1.0E+00 t
1.0E-01

1.0E-02
O (1)
1.0E-03

1.0E-04

1.0E-05
O (2)
1.0E-06

1.0E-07
1 10 100 1000 d.o.f. 10000

w (displacement) M (bending moment)

(rotation) Q (transverse shear force)
W (strain energy)

Fig. 3.4: Timoshenko beam elements, reduced integration

5
3.3.1 A Mechanical Perspective
Perhaps the simplest way to explain the origins of locking is to associate the effect with the
presence of parasitic stresses. With parasitic we mean such stresses that do not show up in
the exact solution of a certain problem. These are, for instance, transverse shear forces in the
case of pure bending of a plate element (transverse shear locking) or membrane stresses in the
case of inextensional bending of shells (membrane locking).
The resulting parasitic internal energy leads to an additional, artificial stiffness. The ratio of
this additional stiffness to the total stiffness of the structure can tend to 1 when a certain pa-
rameter approaches infinity. This means, that the prediction of structural behavior is totally
dominated by artificial, numerical effects and the actual mechanical or physical behavior is
not represented at all. It is this property which makes locking so dramatic in certain cases.
The presence of parasitic stresses can usually be associated with a lack of balance of inter-
polations of certain physical quantities. For example, if the interpolation of a certain stress
component is one order higher than the interpolation of the energetically conjugate strain,
artificial constraint stresses can evolve. In the case of a linear Timoshenko beam element, the
rotations and transverse deflections are interpolated with the same (linear) functions. Thus,
the Bernoulli condition = 0 (which has to hold in the thin limit) can only be fulfilled for the
trivial case of a rigid body rotation or translation. The reason is that the condition
= 0 = w + w =
can only be satisfied for constant (excluding the case of bending, where is linear), as
w is constant a priori.
This mechanical viewpoint has the drawback that the identification of parasitic strains is
subject to a certain arbitrariness of the observer. This problem is especially obvious in the
case of in-plane shear locking which will be discussed later. For comprehension of the physi-
cal background of locking, however, this insight is extremely helpful. It also serves as a
guideline for the development of improved methods which do not suffer from locking prob-
lems.

3.3.2 A Mathematical Perspective

In the mathematical literature, the term locking is not as popular as in engineering literature.
From a mathematical point of view, it is rather an ill-conditioning of the underlying mechani-
cal problem, or the system of partial differential equations, to be more precise. The crucial
property is the presence of a certain small parameter within the equations. This parameter
leads to a high ratio of the coefficients (the stiffnesses) in the discretized system of equations.
Thus, the parasitic terms, evolving from unbalanced shape functions (see Section 3.3.1), are
overly enlarged. The element locks if there is no uniform convergence with respect to this
parameter (i.e. the rate of convergence in the range of coarse meshes depends on this parame-
ter).
This circumstance can be explained most easily at the example of transverse shear locking in
Timoshenko beam elements. Inserting the kinematic and constitutive equations
bt 3
= w + , = , Q = Gbt
{ , M =E
A 12
{
I
into the equilibrium equation m = M + Q leads to

6
 bt 3
m = E + Gbt (w + ) .
12
For a small thickness t the coefficient of the second term, containing the shear modulus G
(and thus the transverse shear stiffness) is relatively large in comparison to the coefficient of
the first one, representing bending. Their ratio is proportional to t t 3 = 1 t 2 , which tends to
infinity relatively fast as t goes to zero. Therefore, in the case of pure bending, the solutions
for and w have to be exactly balanced. Even very small deviations from the correct solu-
tion (and thus a non-zero value between the parentheses) lead to an absolute dominance of the
transverse shear part over the bending part. Thus, small errors in the primal variables w and
are extremely enlarged, which is typical for ill-conditioned problems.

3.4 Shear Locking Phenomena in Beam, Plate, Shell and Solid Elements

3.4.1 Transverse Shear Locking

Transverse shear locking can occur in shear deformable beam, plate and shell elements. In
principle it is also present in three-dimensional solid elements if these are applied to the
analysis of thin-walled structures. However, in this case it is simply called shear locking
(Section 3.4.2), because there is no distinct transverse direction in a solid element. The
stiffening increases with slenderness (length-to-thickness ratio) of the element. Transverse
shear locking is one of the most important locking effects, because it does not only slow down
convergence a little bit, but can essentially preclude an analysis with a reasonable amount of
numerical effort in practical applications. Especially the transverse shear forces are afflicted
with enormous errors. Typical for these errors is an oscillation within the element which is
why a simple smoothing often helps to significantly improve the stresses. This, however, does
not solve the problem of locking as a whole.

convergence of displacem ents transverse shear forces

4
5 q
3 exact

4 Q1
Q2
center deflection

2
Q1-ANS
3
1
2
Q1 0
1 Q2
Q1-ANS -1
0 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5
10 100 1000 10000 -2
number of nodes x-coordinate

Fig. 3.5: Displacements and forces for Q1, Q2 and Q1-ANS elements

7
Figure 3.5 shows some results of an analysis of a rectangular plate of 3 5 m 2 and thickness
t = 20 cm . The plate is fully clamped along all edges and subject to a uniform load. The dia-
gram on the left side shows convergence of the center deflection with increasing number of
nodes for three different elements: The bilinear pure displacement element Q1, its big
brother, the biquadratic, nine-node element Q2 and Q1-ANS, a four-node element, which is
not based on a standard displacement formulation, but on the so-called Assumed Natural
Strain (ANS) technique.
The first observation that can be made is that the results of the higher-order element Q2 are
significantly better than those of Q1, which is no surprise. It is striking, that the basically
linear Q1-ANS element shows practically the same accuracy for the displacement. It has to
be mentioned here, that for the same number of nodes (and therefore degrees of freedom),
computation time for lower order element is much lower, because of the smaller bandwidth of
the stiffness matrix.
On the right hand side of Figure 3.5 the transverse shear force distributions along a line paral-
lel to the longer edge of the plate, starting at the center of the plate (left) and ending at the
supported edge (right) are shown. The underlying discretization utilizes 10 6 elements. The
results of both displacement elements, Q1 and Q2(!), show severe oscillations, especially near
the boundary. Particularly the results of the bilinear element are completely useless. These
oscillations become much more pronounced, as the slenderness (it is actually a rather thick
plate, L t = 15 ) is increased. Transverse shear forces are constant within the element in the
Q1-ANS formulation, and in view of this restriction the approximation of the exact solu-
tion is almost optimal for this element.

10
Q1
2 Q2
1
Q1-ANS
centre deflection
center deflection

Kirchhoff
0,1 1,9

0,01
1,8
Q1
0,001
Q2
Q1-ANS 1,7
0,0001
Kirchhoff

0,00001 1,6
1 10 100 1000 10000 1 10 100 1000 10000
slenderness L/t slenderness L/t

Fig. 3.6: Behavior of elements for t 0

In Figure 3.6 the behavior of the elements as the thickness t approaches zero is shown for a
discretization with 10 6 elements. The left diagram demonstrates the behavior in a log-log
scale, on the right hand side a zoom is provided where (for technical reasons) the vertical axis
is scaled linearly. The load is scaled with t 3 to make the result independent of the thickness in
the thin limit (Kirchhoff solution).

8
The most important phenomenon when discussing the issue of locking is the behavior of Q1
where the displacements apparently approach zero as t 0 . In contrast to that, both Q2 and
Q1-ANS seem to be able to approximately predict the deformations of arbitrarily thin
plates. The zoom on the right hand side, however, reveals that the results of Q1-ANS are ac-
tually significantly better then those of Q2. In fact, Q2 is not completely locking-free (cf. the
oscillations of the shear forces in Fig. 3.5).
Referring to the definition given in the introduction to this chapter, locking affects the rate of
convergence of an element, rather than particular results or errors. This is, however, only true
for meshes with elements of finite size. Eventually, with mesh refinement, both locking-free
elements and elements that suffer from locking will exhibit the same rate of convergence
which depends on the order of the shape functions. Of course, the absolute errors of locking-
free elements are usually much smaller. Moreover, in many cases this consideration is merely
academic, because in practice mesh refinement can only be applied to a certain extend due to
the increasing computational costs.
The numerical example demonstrates two things:
1. A satisfactory result for the displacements does not guarantee reliable results for forces
(Q2). Especially in displacement formulations, the approximation of stresses or stress re-
sultants is usually worse than the approximation of the displacements, because the former
are obtained from the gradients of the latter.
2. Using advanced finite element formulations (in contrast to a pure displacement formula-
tion) can solve locking problems and increase accuracy without requiring additional nu-
merical effort.
Mechanically, shear locking can be correlated with the presence of parasitic transverse shear
strains and stresses. When linear shape functions are used, even constant bending moments
cannot be represented without transverse shear forces. The reason for that has been explained
in Section 3.3.1 at the example of a shear deformable beam element.
When quadratic shape functions are used, constant bending moments can be represented ex-
actly. The locking problem occurs for the linear part of the bending moments which, again,
are accompanied by parasitic shear forces. Thus, convergence of (bi-)quadratic elements is
superior to that of (bi-)linear elements, but they are still not locking-free.
Mathematically, transverse shear locking depends on the small parameter t in the governing
differential equation. The problem is ill-conditioned in the sense that the coefficient of the
shear term grows with the order 1 t 2 compared to the bending term, but the actual solution of
the problem behaves vice versa, i.e. the bending term dominates the solution as t approaches
zero (see Section 3.2.3). Thus, small errors in the shear energy lead to extremely large errors
in the overall solution of the problem.

3.4.2 In-plane Shear Locking

Shear locking can occur in 2d and 3d solid elements as well as shell elements. The effect is
significant only if there is a certain (in-plane) bending deformation of the structure. Figure
3.7 illustrates such a situation for linear and bilinear 2d solid elements (T1 and Q1). The right
hand side shows, qualitatively, the corresponding deformations and indicates the stress states
for longitudinal normal stresses and transverse shear stresses.

9
 xx = const.
F F
xy = const.
xx = const.
F F
xy = const.
y xy

x
F F
xx
F F

Fig. 3.7: Bending deformation of 2d solid elements

In the case of the four-node element, the normal stresses xx vary linearly in y-direction,
which corresponds to the mechanical notion of a bending deformation (bending normal
strains). But there are also shear forces, varying linearly with respect to the x-coordinate.
Like in the linear Timoshenko beam element these stresses could be regarded as parasitic be-
cause they do not correspond to bending, but they are coupled to the bending normal stresses.
In the linear triangle the distribution of all stress components is constant. Thus, the modeling
of a bending deformation is inhibited a priori. As it has been stated already earlier in the con-
text of volumetric locking, the constant stress modes of the linear triangle are exact, but as
soon as linear deformations have to be modeled, the element fails and behaves too stiff.
The behavior of the triangular element in this case reveals the aforementioned weakness in the
mechanical explanation of locking effects via parasitic stresses. As all the stress modes of
the triangle are exact, the term parasitic stress does not seem to be justified. The non-
physical shear stresses, occurring in the above described example, are not coupled to a bend-
ing deformation like in the case of the four-node element. Only an inspection of the system
behavior reveals the problems of the triangular element.

mode

c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 c6 c7 c8

u =1 u=0 u=x u=0 u=y u=0 u = xy u=0

displacement
v=0 v =1 v=0 v=x v=0 v= y v=0 v = xy

xx = u, x 0 0 c3 0 0 0 c7 y 0
yy = v, y 0 0 0 0 0 c6 0 c8 x
2 xy = u, y + v, x 0 0 0 c4 c5 0 c7 x c8 y

Fig. 3.8: Deformation modes of bilinear element Q1

This contradiction is especially pronounced in the case of 2d and 3d solid elements. The rea-
son is that, obviously, the term bending is somewhat artificial in this case.

10
Figure 3.8 illustrates the situation for the bilinear four-node element with the help of a de-
composition into deformation modes ci , such that
u = c1 + c3 x + c5 y + c7 xy ,
v = c2 + c4 x + c6 y + c8 xy .

Here, the eight parameters ci are functions of the nodal displacements u K and v K . The cru-
cial modes with respect to shear locking are modes 7 and 8. All other modes represent con-
stant shear or normal strain modes or rigid body motions, respectively (the rotation is ob-
tained as a linear combination of the two shear modes c4 c5 ). From the strain vectors in the
lowermost line it can be seen how normal and shear strains are coupled. The diagram demon-
strates that it is impossible to find a linear combination of modes that leads to a linear varia-
tion of xx in y-direction without being accompanied by shear strains (mode 7). The same is,
in turn, true for the other direction (mode 8).
From a mathematical point of view, shear locking is not existent. Looking at the correspond-
ing differential equation, there is no ill-conditioning or small parameter. Actually, the criti-
cal parameter in the case of shear locking is the aspect ratio of the element (i.e. no property of
the underlying mathematical problem itself). This can be understood most easily with the help
of an analogy to the Timoshenko beam element. The aspect ratio of a 2d solid element has the
same effect on the stiffness matrix as the length-to-thickness ratio in the beam element.
The fact that the underlying differential equation is well-conditioned is a hint that shear lock-
ing is not as big a problem as transverse shear locking or volumetric locking. It is also obvi-
ous that in practical applications the critical parameter will not reach dramatically high values
if a reasonable mesh is used.
To sum up one can say that in this case both the mathematical point of view and numerical
experience suggest that shear locking is a problem we can live with (as long as solid ele-
ments are not applied to thin plates or shells). Finite elements that exhibit shear locking still
show an acceptable rate of convergence in most situations. Certainly, if advanced finite ele-
ment formulations can improve efficiency, this is an effort worth while also here.

11