Ten-node tetrahedral element (C3D10)

The C3D10 element is a general purpose tetrahedral element (4 integration points). The shape functions can be found in [84]. The node numbering follows the convention of Figure 67.

Figure 67: 10-node tetrahedral element

The element behaves very well and is a good general purpose element, although the C3D20R element yields still better results for the same number of degrees of freedom. The C3D10 element is especially attractive because of the existence of fully automatic tetrahedral meshers.