A locally refinable T-spline finite element method for CAD/CAE integration

T-splines are recently proposed mathematical tools for geometric modeling, which are generalizations of B-splines. Local refinement can be performed effectively using T-splines while it is not the case when B-splines or NURBS are used. Using T-splines, patches with unmatched boundaries can be combined easily without special techniques. In the present study, an analysis framework using T-splines is<br />proposed. In this framework, T-splines are used both for description of geometries and for approximation of solution spaces. This analysis framework can be a basis of a CAD/CAE integrated approach. In this<br />approach, CAD models are directly imported as the analysis models without additional finite element modeling. Some numerical examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the current analysis<br />framework.