A First Course in Finite Elements

The text material evolved from over 50 years of combined teaching experience it deals with a formulation and application of the finite element method.A meaningful course can be constructed from a subset of the chapters in this book for a quarter course; instructions for such use are given in the preface.The course material is organized in three chronological units of one month each: 1) the finite element formulation for one-dimensional problems, 2) the finite element formulation for scalar field problems in two dimensions and 3) finite element programming and application to scalar field problems; and finite element formulation for vector field problems in two dimensions and beams.In conjunction with the book there will be the access and use of ABAQUS software and MATLAB exercises.