Page History

...

Once the solution has converged, the nodal displacement fields obtained from the final equilibrium iteration can be further used to generate the strain and stress distribution at each node.  In FEM, analyses, similar to the ones found in under Mathematical Model page section, are adopted to compute these nodal fields.  However, we have to modify our approach slightly to take into account the fact that we now have a finite number of elements.  This calls for a linear, first-order approximation method among the neighboring elements in computing strain distribution.  In other words, the nodal strain and stress fields are calculated in the following manner.

...