Thermal buckling adaptive multi-patch isogeometric analysis of arbitrary complex-shaped plates based on locally refined NURBS and Nitsche's method

Plate structures suffering thermal environments are often encountered in practice. In this paper, thermal buckling behavior of complex-shaped plates by an adaptive multi-patch isogeometric analysis (IGA) based on locally refined NURBS and Nitsche's method is studied. Kinematic equations are derived using Reissner- Mindlin plate theory, while complex geometries of plates are represented with multiple patches, where the connection between two adjacent patches is constructed through Nitsche's method. To conduct adaptive local refinement, structural mesh refinement strategy is combined with a posterior error estimator, which is defined according to the recovered stresses of the first thermal buckling mode. Numerical examples of plates with simple and complex geometries are considered. The accuracy of critical buckling temperature rise obtained from this study is verified against reference solutions.