A C0 interior penalty finite element method for flexoelectricity (Q2050558)

A \(C^0\) interior penalty method (C0-IPM) is developed for the computational modelling of flexoelectricity. The weak form involves second derivatives of the displacement in the interior of the elements, plus integrals on the element faces, weakly imposing continuity of the displacement derivatives, as well as equilibrium of internal forces across element faces and on interior edges (vertexes in 2D). The formulation is stable, with a symmetric and positive definite matrix for the strain gradient elasticity operator for large enough interior parameter. Convergence tests, on 2D non-uniform curved triangular meshes and on 3D hexahedra regular meshes, show high-order convergence of the method for degree \(p \ge 3\). The proposed computational approach is validated by comparison with previous works solving realistic actuator and sensor problems on a beam, which is in perfect agreement