An isogeometric one-dimensional Kirchhoff-Love type model for developable elastic ribbons (Q2104046)

The authors consider Kirchhoff-Love shells in the case of developable base surfaces. A developable and ruled surface \(\phi \) decomposes into a regular base curve (also called directrix) \(\gamma \in C^{2}\) and a director vector field \(\mathbf{d}\in C^{1}:[u_{a},u_{b}]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{3}\), generating the parametrization \(\phi :Q\rightarrow \mathbb{R} ^{3},(u,v)\mapsto \gamma (u)+\nu \mathbf{d}(u)\), where \(Q=\{(u,v)\in \mathbb{ R}^{2}\mid u_{a}\leq u\leq u_{b}\), \(v_{a}(u)\leq v\leq v_{b}(u)\}\). The authors introduce a relatively parallel frame with legs \((\mathbf{t},\mathbf{ m}_{1},\mathbf{m}_{2})\), curvature components \(k_{1},k_{2}\) and the generalized Frenet equations \[ \frac{d}{du} \left[ \begin{array}{c} \mathbf{t} \\ \mathbf{m}_{1} \\ \mathbf{m}_{2} \end{array} \right] =\left\Vert \dot{\gamma}\right\Vert \left[ \begin{array}{ccc} & k_{1} & k_{2} \\ -k_{1} & & \\ -k_{2} & & \end{array} \right] \left[ \begin{array}{c} \mathbf{t} \\ \mathbf{m}_{1} \\ \mathbf{m}_{2} \end{array} \right] . \] They decompose the director as \(\mathbf{d}= d_{0}\mathbf{t} +d_{1}\mathbf{m}_{1}+d_{2}\mathbf{m}_{2}\) and they compute the director derivative in terms of that of the coordinate functions \(d_{0},d_{1},d_{2}\) with respect to the relatively parallel frame and of \(\left\Vert \dot{ \gamma}\right\Vert \). They finally compute the developability expression \( \det [\mathbf{t},\mathbf{d},\dot{\mathbf{d}}]=0\). The authors then analyze singularities of developable surfaces corresponding to points where the metric tensor \(A:(u,v)\mapsto \lbrack \partial_{\alpha}\phi (u,v)\cdot \partial_{\beta}\phi (u,v)]_{\alpha ,\beta \in \{u,v\}}\), with partial surface derivatives \(\partial_{u}\phi ,\partial_{v}\phi \), becomes singular at \((u^{\ast},v^{\ast})\). There holds \[\det A(u^{\ast},v^{\ast})=\left\Vert \partial_{u}\phi (u^{\ast},v^{\ast})\times \partial_{v} \phi (u^{\ast},v^{\ast})\right\Vert ^{2}=0.\] They express \(A\) in terms of the ruled surface representation and director decomposition. They conclude these preliminaries with considerations on reparametrisations of planar strips and on rectifying developable surfaces and present expressions of the curvature \(H\) and of the bending energy \(\Xi \) for a ribbon, with a planar stress-free reference configuration and uniformly isotropic material. The last parts of the paper present a numerical scheme for the minimization of the bending energy and the results of the simulations. The numerical scheme requires \(C^{2}\)-smoothness (at least almost everywhere) and is based on B-splines. In the simulations, the authors consider rectifying developable strips and Möbius or pre-curved ribbons.