Fully decoupling geometry from discretization in the Bloch–Floquet finite element analysis of phononic crystals

• Published in: Computer methods in applied mechanics and engineering Vol. 382; p. 113848
• Main Authors: van den Boom, S.J., van Keulen, F., Aragón, A.M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 15-08-2021; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Bloch–Floquet periodic boundary conditions; Boundary conditions; Crystal structure; Decoupling; Discretization; Enriched FEM; Enrichment; Finite element analysis; Finite element method; Geometry; IGFEM/HIFEM; Matching; Phononic crystals; Two dimensional analysis; Unfitted/non-matching meshes; Unit cell; XFEM/GFEM; Phononic crystals; Enriched FEM; XFEM/GFEM; Bloch–Floquet periodic boundary conditions; Unfitted/non-matching meshes; IGFEM/HIFEM
• ISSN: 0045-7825; 1879-2138
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cma.2021.113848

An immersed enriched finite element method is proposed for the analysis of phononic crystals (PnCs) with finite element (FE) meshes that are completely decoupled from geometry. Particularly, a technique is proposed to prescribe Bloch–Floquet periodic boundary conditions strongly on non-matching edges of the periodic unit cell (PUC). The enriched finite element formulation effectively transforms a periodic non-confirming discretization into an enriched node-to-node periodic discretizations where periodicity is enforced by any standard procedure. The enriched formulation is also used to describe the interior material interface. This completely eliminates the tedious process of generating matching or fitted meshes during the design process, as it allows changing the inclusion’s geometry as well as the PnC’s lattice type without changing the FE mesh. The proposed approach, which is used to analyze phononic crystals in 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D using structured meshes, exhibits the same performance as the standard finite element analysis on fitted meshes.
•Full decoupling of phononic crystal geometry and mesh without loss of accuracy.•The unit cell boundaries and inclusion geometries can be varied without remeshing.•Bloch–Floquet BCs are prescribed strongly on edges that do not match the mesh.•Transforms non-conforming periodicity into an enriched node-to-node periodicity.•Also suitable for standard and Bloch–Floquet periodic BCs on non-periodic meshes.