Isogeometric analysis for staged construction within lightweight design

Hybrid, bending-active structures constitute a challenging task for structural design due to the high dependency between shape and forces. Isogeometric analysis suggests itself in this context because of several advantages. Model conversion with concomitant corruption of the simulation results can be overcome. All stages of the construction, which are necessary for the correct simulation of such structures, can be modeled and correctly linked. Moreover, the parameter space of the NURBS description provides a perfectly suited, additional design space for embedded entities, which can be defined independently of the parametrization. The contribution of this paper is a presentation of the basics for embedding within isogeometric analysis and reveals beneficial aspects of nested NURBS descriptions in the context of staged construction. A case study of a staged simulation is carried out and another one for the form-finding procedure of hybrid structures