We focus on two and three-dimensional isogeometric finite element method computations with tensor product Ck B-spline basis functions. We consider the computational cost of the multi-frontal direct solver algorithm executed over such tensor product grids. We present an algorithm for estimation of the number of floating-point operations per mesh node resulting from the execution of the multi-frontal solver algorithm with the ordering obtained from the element partition trees. Next, we propose an algorithm that introduces C0 separators between patches of elements of a given size based on the stimated number of flops per node. We show that the computational cost of the multi-frontal solver algorithm executed over the computational grids with C0 separators introduced is around one or two orders of magnitude lower, while the approximability of the functional space is improved. We show O(NlogN) computational complexity of the heuristic algorithm proposing the introduction of the C0 separators between the patches of elements, reducing the computational cost of the multi-frontal solver algorithm
