Finite element computations over quadtree meshes: strain smoothing and semi-analytical formulation

In this paper, we discuss two alternate techniques to treat hanging nodes in a quadtree mesh. Both the techniques share similarities, in that, they require only boundary information. Moreover, they do not require an explicit form of the shape functions, unlike the conventional approaches, for example, as in the work of Gupta (Int J Numer Methods Eng 12:35, 1978) or Tabarraei and Sukumar (Finite Elem Anal Des 41:686, 2005). Hence, no special numerical integration technique is required. One of the techniques relies on the strain projection procedure, whilst the other is based on the scaled boundary finite element method. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and the convergence properties of the two techniques.