----- Title: ----- Finite Elements for Large Strain Problems ----------- Organizers: ----------- Manfred Bischoff Institut fuer Baustatik und Baudynamik Univeristaet Stuttgart Pfaffenwaldring 7 D-70550 Stuttgart, Germany bischoff@ibb.uni-stuttgart.de phone +49 711 685 66123 fax +49 711 685 66130 Ferdinando Auricchio Università di Pavia Dipartimento di Meccanica Strutturale Via Ferrata 1 27100 Pavia, ITALY auricchio@unipv.it phone +39 382 505476 fax +39 382 528 422 ------------------------- Minisymposium description: ------------------------- This minisymposium addresses researchers who are interested in the field of efficient and reliable finite element formulations for non-linear problems in mechanics involving large strains. The main issues are: - Aspects of element technology, aiming toward formulations which are both efficient (locking-free) and stable (no hourglassing or artificial instabilities). - Mathematical analysis of stability properties (of both the exact solution and the numerical method) in the range of large strains. - Interrelations between these aspects and material models for large strain problems. In the past decades enormous efforts have been taken to improve finite element formulations in view of efficiency, stability and robustness. As a consequence, this field enjoys a certain maturity and many problems are well understood today, if not totally solved. Systematic research in this area has often been conducted in a linear setting and later on been applied straightforwardly to non-linear problems. It turns out, that certain stability properties of finite elements may not survive this transition (take the spurious hourglass instabilities of Enhanced Assumed Strain (EAS) elements in large strain elasticity, detected in the mid-nineties, as an example). There are still a number of White spots on the map of this research area, for instance a thorough mathematical analysis of stability properties of finite elements for large strain problems and the proper separation of spurious (numerical) instabilities - which one tries to avoid - and physical instabilities that should be reproduced by the numerical scheme.