Geometrically nonlinear analysis by the generalized finite element method

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the capabilities of the generalized finite element method (GFEM) under the context of the geometrically nonlinear analysis. The effect of large displacements and deformations, typical of such analysis, induces a significant distortion of the element mesh, penalizing the quality of the standard finite element method approximation. The main concern here is to identify how the enrichment strategy from GFEM, that usually makes this method less susceptible to the mesh distortion, may be used under the total and updated Lagrangian formulations. Design/methodology/approach An existing computational environment that allows linear and nonlinear analysis, has been used to implement the analysis with geometric nonlinearity by GFEM, using different polynomial enrichments. Findings The geometrically nonlinear analysis using total and updated Lagrangian formulations are considered in GFEM. Classical problems are numerically simulated and the accuracy and robustness of the GFEM are highlighted. Originality/value This study shows a novel study about GFEM analysis using a complete polynomial space to enrich the approximation of the geometrically nonlinear analysis adopting the total and updated Lagrangian formulations. This strategy guarantees the good precision of the analysis for higher level of mesh distortion in the case of the total Lagrangian formulation. On the other hand, in the updated Lagrangian approach, the need of updating the degrees of freedom during the incremental and iterative solution are for the first time identified and discussed here.