Hybrid IGA/FEA Vehicle Crash Simulations with Trimmed NURBS-based Shells in LS-DYNA

Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) [1] is a rather new approach to Finite Element Analysis (FEA), using spline basis functions known from Computer Aided Design (CAD) for describing both the geometry and the solution field. The main motivation for IGA is the integration of design and analysis. Achieving such a full integration requires a holistic approach with a fundamentally different modeling strategy and development process to exploit the full potential of IGA. Such changes certainly take time and cannot be achieved overnight. Fortunately, IGA with its higher-order and higher-continuity elements also offers several additional advantages such as an accurate geometry description, superior analysis qualities, a larger explicit time step size or smart modeling techniques. Thus, users may benefit from IGA immediately, even without a full paradigm shift.