Overlapping Finite Elements for Arbitrary Surfaces in 3-D

Overlapping elements have previously been employed to connect two surfaces or subdomains meshed separately. This method has been developed in 2-D and in 3-D for plane surfaces. The paper extends the overlapping method to arbitrary non-planar surfaces; this is accomplished by introducing new shape functions. The proposed method can be applied to account for movement without any undesirable distortion of the mesh. Two examples are presented to show the effectiveness of the new method.