Methodological Approaches for Kinematic Coupling of non-matching Finite Element meshes

When simulating, by FE analyses, the mechanical behavior of complex structures, different degrees of mesh refinement or different element formulations may be needed throughout the structure. Indeed, depending on the geometrical configuration of the structure and on its response in terms of stress distributions to the applied loading conditions, some regions may need to be represented by an increased number of elements, or by elements of higher order to guarantee the desired accuracy in results. When dealing with such complex structures, multiscale (global-local) approaches are commonly adopted to optimize the computational cost by increasing mesh refinements and /or introducing elements with different formulations in specific region of the structures identified as “local model” and connected to the rest of the structure identified as “global model”.This paper addresses the issue of connecting non matching FE global and local modelsby introducing appropriate kinematic constraints at the interfaces. A sensitivity analysis on simple specimen is presented here. The aim is to investigate and to discuss the capability of the most common FE based tools to deal with global-local Analysis. The continuity of displacements and stresses across the interface between global and local models and the influence of the presence of the local model on the global model solution are used as parameters to test the quality of results. The work presented in this paper has been funded by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under the grant agreement n° 234147. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of ICM1