On the choice of finite elements

Most FE programs offer a large number of different finite elements for the calculations (often far more than 100). Describing these in more detail is beyond the scope of this lecture, but a selection of the most common elements is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Schematic overview of different finite elements. Cubic elements for 2D and 3D are not shown, the displayed Serendipity elements are a special case of the corresponding Lagrangian elements.

... more to come ...