Explicit Isogeometric B-Rep Analysis on Trimmed NURBS-Based Multi-Patch CAD Models in LS-DYNA

A volatile and highly competitive market forces automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to speed up their vehicle development processes. A key component in this process is structural design through Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Although the efficiency of this process has been significantly improved over the past years, the necessary conversion of NURBS-based CAD models into (linear) polynomial-based FEA models turned out to be a persistent challenge. Generating FEA models usually involves time- and labor-intensive clean-up, de-featuring and meshing steps leading to vehicle model generation times of several weeks. During the iterative vehicle development process, such model generations are even performed multiple times. It is furthermore current practice to apply design changes motivated by structural analysis results directly on the FEA model, which then diverges more and more from the initial CAD model. Adapting the CAD model to the modified FEA model for the next design cycle again requires a significant amount of manual work.