CHAPTER FOUR

Finite Element Method

4.1. BACKGROUND
The concept of the Finite Element Method (FEM) was coined by
Clough in the early 1960s in his infamous book entitled “The finite ele-
ment method in plane stress analysis”. In Turner et al. (1956), the application
of finite elements has been presented for the analysis of aircraft structures
and it is referred to as one of the key contributions in the development of
the FEM. It is rightly addressed in Hutton (2004) that FEM is a compu-
tational technique used to obtain approximate solutions of boundary value
problems in engineering. For convenience, the FEM procedure permits
the continuum to be discretized into a finite number of parts (or elements)
and emphasizes that the characteristics of the continuous domain may be
estimated by assembling the similar properties of discretized elements per
node. As a result, the FEM has been implemented rigorously for solving
a wide variety of problems in applied science and engineering and it has
been rapidly developed over the years (Rao, 2004).

4.2. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

One of the recent trends in solving the above mentioned problems
is specifically based on FEM and its research development is reviewed in
this domain. As regards these issues, in Öz (2000) natural frequencies of
an Euler–Bernoulli beam-mass system are calculated using this approach.
Two finite element formulations of Reddy’s higher-order theory, assum-
ing different values for C 0 , were used in Nayak et al. (2002) to obtain
the natural frequencies of composite and sandwich plates. In Chakraborty
et al. (2003) a new beam finite element has been proposed based on the
first-order shear deformation theory to study the thermo-elastic behav-
ior of functionally graded (FG) beam structures. In Ribeiro (2004), the
shooting, Newton and p-version hierarchical finite element methods are
applied to geometrically investigate nonlinear periodic vibrations of elastic
and isotropic beams and plates. In Şimşek (2010a), the vibration response
of a simply supported FG beam to a moving mass has been examined by
using Euler–Bernoulli, Timoshenko and the third-order shear deformation
beam theories. In Alshorbagy et al. (2011b), FEM is used to detect the

Computational Structural Mechanics © 2019 Elsevier Inc. 25

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-815492-2.00010-1 All rights reserved.
26 Computational Structural Mechanics

free vibration characteristics of an FG beam. In Shahba et al. (2011), free

vibration and stability analysis of axially FG Timoshenko tapered beams
are investigated using classical and nonclassical boundary conditions using
FEM. The bending and flexural vibration behavior of sandwich FG plates
have been provided by Natarajan and Manickam (2012) using QUAD-8
shear flexible element developed by higher-order structural theory. In Vo
et al. (2014b) a finite element model has been developed for vibration and
buckling of FG sandwich beams based on refined shear deformation theory.
Free vibration and stability of axially FG tapered Euler–Bernoulli beams
have been investigated using FEM by Shahba and Rajasekaran (2012). In
Vo et al. (2014a), static and vibration analysis of FG beams are presented
using refined shear deformation theory by using finite element formula-
tion. A novel Timoshenko beam element based on the framework of strain
gradient elasticity theory is presented in Zhang et al. (2014) for the analysis
of the static bending, free vibration and buckling behaviors of Timoshenko
microbeams. Very recently, in Hui et al. (2017) a family of beam higher-
order finite elements have been given based on a hierarchical 1-D unified
formulation for a free vibration analysis of 3-D sandwich structures. To
name a few out of recent findings, one may easily find finite element so-
lutions of structural members in Kim and Lee (2017); Kahya and Turan
(2017) and in the references therein.

4.3. COMPUTATIONAL ALGORITHMS

As said in Section 3.3 for DQM, the finite element formulation re-
ported here is meant for the vibration characteristics of FG beams. As such,
the transverse displacement and rotation (slope) describe the deformed
shape of the beam and these components at each end of the beam are
treated as the unknown degrees of freedom. As there are four nodal dis-
placements at the beam ends, the cubic displacement model can be defined
as (Rao, 2004)

w (x) = a1 + a2 x + a3 x2 + a4 x3 , (4.1)

where a1 , a2 , a3 and a4 are the unknown coefficients, which can be found

by using the edge conditions. The displacement (w) and rotation (θ ) at
Finite Element Method 27

x = 0 and L can be substituted in Eq. (4.1) and yield

⎧ ⎫ ⎛ ⎞⎧ ⎫
⎪
⎪w1 ⎪ ⎪ 1 0 0 0 ⎪ ⎪a1 ⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎨ θ1 ⎪
⎪ ⎜ ⎟⎪⎪ ⎪ ⎪
⎬ ⎜0 1 0 0 ⎟ ⎨a2 ⎬
=⎜ ⎟ . (4.2)
⎪
⎪
⎪ w 2 ⎪
⎪
⎜
⎪ ⎝1 L L2 L3 ⎟
⎠⎪⎪ ⎪
⎪a3 ⎪
⎪
⎪
⎩ ⎪ ⎭ ⎪
⎩ ⎪
⎭
θ2 0 1 2L 3L 2 a4

Solving Eq. (4.2), the shape function [N ] takes the form

[N ] = [N1 (x) N2 (x) N3 (x) N4 (x)], (4.3)

where

2x3 − 3Lx2 + L 3
N1 (x) = ,
L3
x3 − 2Lx2 + L 2 x
N2 (x) = ,
L3
2x3 − 3Lx2
N3 (x) = ,
L3
x3 − Lx2
N4 (x) = ,
L3
which helps to find the kinetic energy; also, the connectivity matrix [B] for
elastic strain energy may be given as

[B] = [B1 (x) B2 (x) B3 (x) B4 (x)]

 2  (4.4)
d N1 d2 N2 d2 N3 d2 N4
= 2 2 2 2
.
dx dx dx dx

From Eqs. (4.3) and (4.4), one may find the respective element inertia and
stiffness matrices as
⎛ ⎞
156 22L 54 −13L
⎜ ⎟
ρ(z)AL ⎜
⎜
22L 4L 2 13L −3L 2 ⎟
⎟
[Me ] = ⎜ (4.5)
420 ⎝ 54 13L 156 −22L ⎟⎠
−13L −3L 2 −22L 4L 2
28 Computational Structural Mechanics

and
⎛ ⎞
12 6L −12 6L
⎜ ⎟
E(z)I ⎜ 6L 4L 2 −6L 2L 2 ⎟
[Ke ] = ⎜ ⎟ (4.6)
L3 ⎜−12 −6L −6L ⎟
⎝ 12 ⎠
6L 2L 2 −6L 4L 2
The formulation for local stiffness and mass matrix are clearly given in
Öz (2000) for the case of isotropic beams. Before we take the notion into
account that Young’s modulus in the stiffness matrix and the mass density in
a mass matrix are dependent on the thickness, there occurs a slight modifi-
cation in the expression of corresponding matrices. If discretization of the
total length of the FG beam is considered, discretized element inertia and
stiffness matrices will be combined to obtain the global inertia and stiffness
matrix, respectively. The equation of motion for free vibration of FG beams
can be obtained from
 
[M ] w  + [K ] {w } = {0} , (4.7)

where [K ] and [M ] are the global stiffness and mass matrices, respectively,
and {w } is the system displacement vector. Then substituting
√
the harmonic
displacement in the form w (x, t) = W (x) exp(iωt) with i = −1 and defin-
ing ω as the natural frequency and W as the amplitude of displacement, we
can write Eq. (4.7) as
 
[K ] − 2 [M ] {W } = {0} . (4.8)

For nontrivial solutions of Eq. (4.8), it is assumed that the determinant

of the coefficient matrix must be zero; it gives

det([K ] − 2 [M ]) = 0 (4.9)

and it is referred to as the generalized eigenvalue problem. Consequently,

natural frequencies are to be solved by incorporating various sets of classical
boundary conditions.