Domain Decomposition Methods and Kirchhoff-Love Shell Multipatch Coupling in Isogeometric Analysis

The necessity for solving the isogeometric Kirchhoff-Love shell problem into multiple domains has been exemplified especially in cases where the geometry comprises multipatches. In fact, geometries taken from Computer Aided Geometric Design involve in principle trimmed multipatches. Herein, the application and comparison of the most common Domain Decomposition Methods for the coupling of Kirchhoff-Love shell multipatches in isogeometric analysis is presented. The investigated methods comprise Penalty and Lagrange Multipliers methods. All methods are extended to account for geometrically nonlinear problems. The aforementioned methods provided highly accurate results, thus extending the Kirchhoff-Love shell analysis from a single to multiple patches which is a prerequisite for solving practical engineering problems using isogeometric analysis.