A locking-free formulation for three-dimensional isogeometric analysis

Abstract

Non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS)-based isogeometric analysis (IGA) suffers from locking while analyzing highly slender geometries or problems dominated by incompressibility or near incompressibility constraint. The authors have recently proposed a class of reliable and efficient NURBS-based hybrid elements to alleviate locking in two-dimensional linear elasticity regime. Nevertheless, in several practical situations, the problem often necessitates the three-dimensional elements to analyze an accurate behavior of the domain. In the present work, novel stress-based elements are introduced to eliminate the adverse effects of locking in three-dimensional linear elastic NURBS-based IGA. The comprehensive assessment of several benchmark numerical examples shows the method’s capabilities.