NAFEMS has produced many benchmarks for the assessment of finite element systems. The presentation of these benchmarks is generally in the compact form of a single sheet, which defines the benchmark. This form of presentation is ideal for its purpose but does not show the difficult process and work that went into the design of the benchmark. This report gives an enlightening and educational view of the background to several standard NAFEMS benchmarks.

The work was performed by G.A.O Davies, R T Fenner and R W Lewis under the auspices of the NAFEMS General Technology Working Group.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

LE1 The elliptic membrane

LE2 A cylindrical shell patch test

LE3 Hemisphere with point loads

LE4 Axisymmetric hyperbolic shell

LE5 Z-section cantilever

LE6 Skew plate with normal pressure

LE7 Axisymmetric cylinder/sphere with normal pressure

LE8 Axisymmetric shell with pressure

LE9 Axisymmetric branched shell

LE10 Thick plate – normal pressure

LE11 Solid cylinder taper/sphere

T1 Membrane with hotspot

T2 One dimensional heat transfer with radiation

T3 One-dimensional transient heat transfer

T4 Two-dimensional heat transfer with convection

CLOSURE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

REFERENCES