An isogeometric boundary element method for problems in elasticity is
presented, which is based on an independent approximation for the geometry,
traction and displacement field. This enables a flexible choice of refinement
strategies, permits an efficient evaluation of geometry related information, a
mixed collocation scheme which deals with discontinuous tractions along
non-smooth boundaries and a significant reduction of the right hand side of the
system of equations for common boundary conditions. All these benefits are
achieved without any loss of accuracy compared to conventional isogeometric
formulations. The system matrices are approximated by means of hierarchical
matrices to reduce the computational complexity for large scale analysis. For
the required geometrical bisection of the domain, a strategy for the evaluation
of bounding boxes containing the supports of NURBS basis functions is
presented. The versatility and accuracy of the proposed methodology is
demonstrated by convergence studies showing optimal rates and real world
examples in two and three dimensions.Comment: 32 pages, 27 figure