Establishing Connectivity for Isogeometric and Hybrid FEA/Isogeometric Analyses with Multiple Parts through Beam Element Projection

This paper introduces a simple method to establish connectivity information for isogeometric assemblies given potentially erroneous beam-based connectivity data through projecting endpoints of beams onto target spline surfaces using techniques already available in most computer-aided design software. The proposed method is simple, readily implementable, introduces minimal deviations from original connectivity information, and is shown to be suitable for analysis input in LS-DYNA.