Assumed strain nodally integrated hexahedral finite element formulation for elastoplastic applications

In this work, a linear hexahedral element based on an assumed strain finite element technique is presented for the solution of plasticity problems. The element stems from the Nodally Integrated Continuum Element (NICE) formulation and its extensions. Assumed gradient operators are derived via nodal integration from the kinematic-weighted residual; the degrees of freedom are only the displacements at the nodes. The adopted constitutive model is the classical associative von Mises plasticity model with isotropic and kinematic hardening; in particular, a double-step midpoint integration algorithm is adopted for the integration and solution of the relevant nonlinear evolution equations. Efficiency of the proposed method is assessed through simple benchmark problems and comparison with reference solutions.