Leveraging spectral analysis to elucidate membrane locking and unlocking in isogeometric finite element formulations of the curved Euler-Bernoulli beam

TL;DR

This paper uses spectral analysis to evaluate membrane locking in isogeometric finite element formulations of curved Euler-Bernoulli beams, revealing how different methods mitigate locking effects across eigenmodes.

Contribution

It introduces a spectral analysis approach to assess locking phenomena and compares multiple finite element formulations for their effectiveness in reducing locking.

Findings

Spectral analysis effectively identifies locking effects in eigenmodes.

Locking-free formulations show improved spectral accuracy over displacement-based methods.

Eigenvalue and mode errors reveal the efficiency of different formulations in mitigating locking.

Abstract

In this paper, we take a fresh look at using spectral analysis for assessing locking phenomena in finite element formulations. We propose to "measure" locking by comparing the difference between eigenvalue and mode error curves computed on coarse meshes with "asymptotic" error curves computed on "overkill" meshes, both plotted with respect to the normalized mode number. To demonstrate the intimate relation between membrane locking and spectral accuracy, we focus on the example of a circular ring discretized with isogeometric curved Euler-Bernoulli beam elements. We show that the transverse-displacement-dominating modes are locking-prone, while the circumferential-displacement-dominating modes are naturally locking-free. We use eigenvalue and mode errors to assess five isogeometric finite element formulations in terms of their locking-related efficiency: the displacement-based formulation with full and reduced integration and three locking-free formulations based on the B-bar, discrete strain gap and Hellinger-Reissner methods. Our study shows that spectral analysis uncovers locking-related effects across the spectrum of eigenvalues and eigenmodes, rigorously characterizing membrane locking in the displacement-based formulation and unlocking in the locking-free formulations.