A NURBS based hybrid collocation-Galerkin method for the analysis of boundary represented solids

The paper is concerned with a new numerical method, NURBS based hybrid collocation-Galerkin method (NURBS-HCGM), to solve the in-plane motion problem of elastic solids. It combines the merits of the so-called scaled boundary finite-element method (SB-FEM) and the isogeometric collocation method. For the analysis, the boundary scaling technique of SB-FEM is adopted. It leads to a formulation, where only the boundary of a structure is discretized. Here, the NURBS basis functions are employed for the description of the geometry of the boundary as well as for the approximation of the displacements at the boundary. This is in accordance with the boundary representation modeling technique, which is commonly employed in computer aided design software. The inner domain is described by a radial scaling parameter. Applying the weak form only in circumferential direction the governing partial differential equations of elasticity are transformed to an ordinary differential equation (ODE) of Euler type, where the unknown displacements are a function of the radial scaling parameter. In the present work a NURBS based collocation scheme is introduced to solve this equation. NURBS basis functions are suggested for the approximation of the displacements in scaling direction. The higher continuity provided by NURBS allows to use collocation to solve the ODE directly instead of using the weak form in scaling direction. The proposed approach is validated by comparison with the eigenvalue solution of the ODE. It is remarked that the eigenvalue solution is restricted to linear problems, whereas the proposed method could be extended to nonlinear problems. In general, the presented formulation will allow to model patches bounded by an arbitrary number of contour boundaries. The accuracy of the proposed approach is analyzed and estimated with respect to analytical solutions. The computational cost is investigated with the help of numerical examples and is compared to isogeometric Galerkin approach. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.