We present an isogeometric method for Kirchhoff-Love shell analysis of shell structures with geometries composed of multiple patches and which possibly possess extraordinary vertices, i.e. vertices with a valency different to four. The proposed isogeometric shell discretisation is based on the one hand on the approximation of the mid-surface by a particular class of multi-patch surfaces, called analysis-suitable~$G^1$ [1], and on the other hand on the use of the globally $C^1$-smooth isogeometric multi-patch spline space [2]. We use our developed technique within an isogeometric Kirchhoff-Love shell formulation [3] to study linear and non-linear shell problems on multi-patch structures. Thereby, the numerical results show the great potential of our method for efficient shell analysis of geometrically complex multi-patch structures which cannot be modeled without the use of extraordinary vertices.

翻译：我们提出了一种用于Kirchhoff-Love壳体分析的等几何方法，适用于由多个曲面片组成且可能具有异常顶点（即度数不同于四的顶点）的壳体结构几何。所提出的等几何壳体离散基于两方面：一方面采用一类称为分析适用$G^1$[1]的多片曲面近似中面，另一方面使用全局$C^1$光滑的等几何多片样条空间[2]。我们将该技术应用于等几何Kirchhoff-Love壳体公式[3]中，研究多片结构上的线性和非线性壳体问题。数值结果表明，该方法在几何复杂且无法避免异常顶点的多片结构高效壳体分析中展现出巨大潜力。