Treatment of volumetric locking in the strain-smoothed 3-node triangular finite element

In this study, we propose a method to alleviate the volumetric locking in the strain-smoothed 3-node triangular finite element. The strain-smoothed 3-node triangular finite element recently developed provides excellent performance. As Poisson's ratio close to 0.5, its predictive capability however deteriorates due to volumetric locking. To alleviate the volumetric locking, a node-wise smoothing process is employed only for volumetric strain while maintaining the formulation of the original strainsmoothed 3-node triangular finite element for deviatoric strain. The proposed strain-smoothed 3-node triangular element passes basic tests and exhibit alleviation of volumetric locking. Through various numerical problems, the performance of the proposed strain-smoothed 3-node triangular element is demonstrated.