image and image projection methods for nearly incompressible linear and non-linear elasticity and plasticity using higher-order NURBS elements Original Research Article

This paper presents projection methods to treat the incompressibility constraint in small- and large-deformation elasticity and plasticity within the framework of Isogeometric Analysis. After reviewing some fundamentals of isogeometric analysis, we investigate the use of higher-order Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) within the image projection method. The higher-continuity property of such functions is explored in nearly incompressible applications and shown to produce accurate and robust results. A new non-linear image projection method, based on a modified minimum potential energy principle and inspired by the image method is proposed for the large-deformation case. It leads to a symmetric formulation for which the consistent linearized operator for fully non-linear elasticity is derived and used in a Newton–Raphson iterative procedure. The performance of the methods is assessed on several numerical examples, and results obtained are shown to compare favorably with other published techniques.