Isogeometric Boundary Element Analysis with elasto-plastic inclusions. Part 1: Plane problems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel isogeometric boundary element method for plane problems with elastic and inelastic inclusions, eliminating the need for volume discretization and using lower singularity kernels, verified through practical geomechanics applications.

Contribution

It presents a new isogeometric boundary element approach that models inclusions with different elastic and inelastic properties without volume discretization.

Findings

Method accurately models elastic and inelastic inclusions.

Eliminates volume discretization in boundary element analysis.

Validated on geomechanics application.

Abstract

In this work a novel approach is presented for the isogeometric Boundary Element analysis of domains that contain inclusions with different elastic properties than the ones used for computing the fundamental solutions. In addition the inclusion may exhibit inelastic material behavior. In this paper only plane stress/strain problems are considered. In our approach the geometry of the inclusion is described using NURBS basis functions. The advantage over currently used methods is that no discretization into cells is required in order to evaluate the arising volume integrals. The other difference to current approaches is that Kernels of lower singularity are used in the domain term. The implementation is verified on simple finite and infinite domain examples with various boundary conditions. Finally a practical application in geomechanics is presented.