Information transfer between incompatible finite element meshes: Application to coupled thermo-viscoelasticity

This article is concerned with information transfer between non-matching finite element meshes. Such a feature is not new in the literature, but we focus herein on a geometric approach to transfer solution fields in order to be as application independent as possible. Moreover, the dedicated case concerns the transfer of finite element fields defined at integration points of the meshes, and allows iterative exchange of fields in both directions. To do so, we propose an extension to the mortar technique that fulfills these goals and that does not suffer from a high computational cost. The application is the simulation of a strongly coupled thermo-viscoelastic problem with phase transition, solved with a partitioning technique. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.