A differential quadrature hierarchical finite element method using Fekete points for triangles and tetrahedrons and its applications to structural vibration

Abstract

A differential quadrature hierarchical finite element method (DQHFEM) using Fekete points was formulated for triangles and tetrahedrons and applied to structural vibration analyses. First, orthogonal polynomials on triangles and tetrahedrons that can be used as bases of the hierarchical finite element method (HFEM) were derived and simple formulas of transforming one dimensional non-uniform nodes to simplexes were presented. Then the non-uniform nodes were used as initial guesses to solve the Fekete points on simplexes through Newton–Raphson’s method together with the orthogonal polynomials. New differential quadrature (DQ) rules on simplexes were formulated using the HFEM bases and the Fekete points. The numbers of nodes or bases on different edges and faces and inside the body of the new DQ elements do not relate with each other like the HFEM that can freely assign different numbers of bases on different edges and faces and inside the body. So the new DQ method was named as a differential quadrature hierarchical (DQH) method that uses either interpolation functions or orthogonal polynomials as bases inside the element. Its weak form was named as the DQHFEM. Besides the DQH method and its weak form, a simple method of generating high quality linear and high order triangular and tetrahedral meshes from a single NURBS patch was presented. Numerical tests of the DQHFEM through structural vibration analyses showed that high accuracy results can be obtained using only a few nodes even on curvilinear domains using the DQH bases on both physical and geometric fields. It was concluded that wide applications of the DQH method and the DQHFEM to science and engineering are possible and commercial codes based on them are deserved to be developed.