Shear locking reduction in eight-noded tri-linear solid finite elements

A new quadrature rule for eight-noded solid finite elements is suggested. The formulation reduces those locking problems associated with the classical full and selectively-reduced Gauss integration schemes and it is based on an element local coordinate system where the shear strain components are averaged in groups of four integration points. This work is mainly interesting in contexts of plasticity and explicit time integration, where low order elements often are preferable.