Computational morphogenesis of free form shells: Filter methods to create alternative solutions

p. 536-547Actual trends in numerical shape optimal design of structures deal with handling of very large dimensions of design space. The goal is to allowing as much design freedom as possible while considerably reducing the modelling effort. As a consequence, several technical problems have to be solved to get procedures which are robust, easy to use and which can handle many design parameters efficiently. The paper briefly discusses several of the most important aspects in this context and presents many illustrative examples which show typical applications for the design of light weight shell and membrane structures.Bletzinger, K.; Firi, M.; Linhard, J.; Wüchner, R. (2009). Computational morphogenesis of free form shells: Filter methods to create alternative solutions. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/654

Volumetric Untrimming: Precise decomposition of trimmed trivariates into tensor products

3D objects, modeled using Computer Aided Geometric Design tools, are traditionally represented using a boundary representation (B-rep), and typically use spline functions to parameterize these boundary surfaces. However, recent development in physical analysis, in isogeometric analysis (IGA) in specific, necessitates a volumetric parametrization of the interior of the object. IGA is performed directly by integrating over the spline spaces of the volumetric spline representation of the object. Typically, tensor-product B-spline trivariates are used to parameterize the volumetric domain. A general 3D object, that can be modeled in contemporary B-rep CAD tools, is typically represented using trimmed B-spline surfaces. In order to capture the generality of the contemporary B-rep modeling space, while supporting IGA needs, Massarwi and Elber (2016) proposed the use of trimmed trivariates volumetric elements. However, the use of trimmed geometry makes the integration process more difficult since integration over trimmed B-spline basis functions is a highly challenging task. In this work, we propose an algorithm that precisely decomposes a trimmed B-spline trivariate into a set of (singular only on the boundary) tensor-product B-spline trivariates, that can be utilized to simplify the integration process in IGA. The trimmed B-spline trivariate is first subdivided into a set of trimmed B\'ezier trivariates, at all its internal knots. Then, each trimmed B\'ezier trivariate, is decomposed into a set of mutually exclusive tensor-product B-spline trivariates, that precisely cover the entire trimmed domain. This process, denoted untrimming, can be performed in either the Euclidean space or the parametric space of the trivariate. We present examples on complex trimmed trivariates' based geometry, and we demonstrate the effectiveness of the method by applying IGA over the (untrimmed) results.Comment: 18 pages, 32 figures. Contribution accepted in International Conference on Geometric Modeling and Processing (GMP 2019

Non-singular developable triangular Bézier patches

We show a characterisation of developable surfaces in the form of B´ezier triangular patches. • Constructions used for rectangular patches are not useful, since they produce degenerate triangular patches. • Explicit constructions of non-degenerate developable triangular patches are provided. • Interpolation of a developable triangle between a curve c(u), the last ruling and initial velocity of the other bounding curve d(u)

Three-dimensional unstructured grid generation via incremental insertion and local optimization

Algorithms for the generation of 3D unstructured surface and volume grids are discussed. These algorithms are based on incremental insertion and local optimization. The present algorithms are very general and permit local grid optimization based on various measures of grid quality. This is very important; unlike the 2D Delaunay triangulation, the 3D Delaunay triangulation appears not to have a lexicographic characterization of angularity. (The Delaunay triangulation is known to minimize that maximum containment sphere, but unfortunately this is not true lexicographically). Consequently, Delaunay triangulations in three-space can result in poorly shaped tetrahedral elements. Using the present algorithms, 3D meshes can be constructed which optimize a certain angle measure, albeit locally. We also discuss the combinatorial aspects of the algorithm as well as implementational details

Nonsingular isogeometric boundary element method for Stokes flows in 3D

Isogeometric analysis (IGA) is emerging as a technology bridging computer aided geometric design (CAGD), most commonly based on Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) surfaces, and engineering analysis. In finite element and boundary element isogeometric methods (FE-IGA and IGA-BEM), the NURBS basis functions that describe the geometry define also the approximation spaces. In the FE-IGA approach, the surfaces generated by the CAGD tools need to be extended to volumetric descriptions, a major open problem in 3D. This additional passage can be avoided in principle when the partial differential equations to be solved admit a formulation in terms of boundary integral equations, leading to boundary element isogeometric analysis (IGA-BEM). The main advantages of such an approach are given by the dimensionality reduction of the problem (from volumetric-based to surface-based), by the fact that the interface with CAGD tools is direct, and by the possibility to treat exterior problems, where the computational domain is infinite. By contrast, these methods produce system matrices which are full, and require the integration of singular kernels. In this paper we address the second point and propose a nonsingular formulation of IGA-BEM for 3D Stokes flows, whose convergence is carefully tested numerically. Standard Gaussian quadrature rules suffice to integrate the boundary integral equations, and carefully chosen known exact solutions of the interior Stokes problem are used to correct the resulting matrices, extending the work by Klaseboer et al. (2012) [27] to IGA-BEM