Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg.

200 (2011) 233–241

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg.

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cma

Cylindrical element: Isogeometric model of continuum rod

Jia Lu a,⇑, Xianlian Zhou b
a
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Center for Computer Aided Design, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1527, USA
b
CFD Research Corporation, 215 Wynn Drive, Huntsville, AL 35805, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A geometric mapping between a canonical cylindrical domain and a physical rod-like body is established
Received 9 April 2010 and is utilized to analyze rod-like structures undergoing large deformations. A rod is described as a full
Received in revised form 12 August 2010 three-dimensional continuum, yet parameterized only by surface control points. This description pre-
Accepted 13 August 2010
serves the geometric smoothness, and allows for the consideration of lateral deformation in analysis.
Available online 20 August 2010
Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the method.
 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Isogeometric analysis
Nonlinear rod
NURBS
Harmonic mapping
Harmonic coordinates

1. Introduction in geometry. Here, a rod body is described by a combination of

A rod is a slender three-dimensional body for which the cross
sectional dimensions are much smaller than the longitudinal
dimension. In classical mechanics, a rod is described as a deform-
able curve with some small cross sectional area around it. The
Kirchhoff–Love theory treated a rod as an inextensible curve with
rigid cross sections that remain perpendicular to the centerline
during deformation [1]. Antman [2] generalized the Kirchhoff–
Love theory to allow for longitudinal extensions and transverse
shear, but the cross sections are assumed to remain rigid. Based
on Antman’s theory, many researchers developed numerical for-
mulations for analyzing rod structures, see e.g. [3,4], and [5,
Chapter 17].
The afore-mentioned theories share a common feature that the
rod cross sections are not allowed to deform. This assumption re-
duces a rod body to a one-dimensional continuum and thus signif-
icantly simplifies the equilibrium theory. However, it precludes the
consideration of lateral deformations. In practical applications, in
particular in the analysis of soft biological structures, one often
encounters slender bodies undergoing lateral deformations or sub-
ject to lateral contact. Geometrically, these systems are best mod-
eled as rods, and yet kinetically, in the current paradigm they will
have to be described by a full three-dimensional theory.
This paper proposes a new numerical formulation for rod-like
structures. In this approach, a rod is described as a three-dimen-
sional continuum as it eventually is. The point of departure lies
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 319 3356405; fax: +1 319 3355669.
E-mail address: jia-lu@uiowa.edu (J. Lu).
Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Graphics (CG) geom-
etries. Dimensional reduction is achieved at the geometric level, by
utilizing a surface description involving only surface control points.
In a recent publication, the first author developed a method for
parameterizing a smooth surface using boundary control points
[6]. In that description, the NURBS representation of a boundary
curve is extended into the interior, resulting in a harmonic map-
ping between the canonical unit disk and a smooth 2D domain.
Combining the cross section mapping with a NURBS centerline
leads to a tensor-product rod, whereby a point in the rod is repre-
sented as a linear combination of the surface control points. This
representation is utilized in the isogeometric framework for anal-
ysis. The method has the following attributes:
1. Geometry and analysis are placed on a uniform basis.
2. Only surface control points are needed.
3. Smooth geometries are preserved. Some common geometries
can be described exactly.
The Cosserat theory of rod [7–11] allows for cross sectional
deformations. Rubin developed a numerical formulation for Coss-
erat rod [12]. A novel 3D finite element based on the concept of
Cosserat point was also proposed [13]. The challenge of Cosserat
approaches lies in the description of geometry, namely, how to
parameterize a smooth rod using directors. The implementations
in [12,13] relate the directors to element nodal vectors and essen-
tially utilize the finite element geometry, which is not effective for
describing smooth geometries. In this regard, this paper may
suggest a different geometric basis for Cosserat rod formulations.

0045-7825/$ - see front matter  2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cma.2010.08.007
234 J. Lu, X. Zhou / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 200 (2011) 233–241

The article begins with a review of NURBS and harmonic coor- X

n
x¼ T i ðnÞPi : ð6Þ
dinates, followed by the introduction of the tensor-product cylin-
i¼1
ders. Interested readers are referred to [14] for a comprehensive
coverage on NURBS. A discussion on harmonic coordinates in a cir- Eq. (6) defines a harmonic mapping F: D ´ P that maps the unit disk
cular domain is contained in [6]. The proposed cylindrical element D to the domain P. Notably, the mapping is parameterized by
is presented in Section 3. The element equations are established in boundary control points only.
the isoparametric setting, in the same manner as the isogeometric The canonical configuration introduced in [6] is outlined below.
analysis [15–21]. Numerical examples are presented in Section 4 to The unit circle is divided into n equal arcs and each arc is repre-
demonstrate the features of the method. The work aims at soft sented by a 2nd degree Bezier curve. To ensure C1 continuity, the
body analysis; the application to biological systems is demon- joints between two adjacent arcs are eliminated. This yields the
strated using an example of skeletal muscle modeling. following boundary basis functions:
8  
>
> 1 tt i2
N2;2 ti1 t i2 6 t < t i1 ;
2. Geometric basis >
> 2 t
>
>  
i2
    
>
<1 N tt i1
2 0;2 t t þ 2N1;2 ttt i1
t i1
þ N 2;2 ttt i1
t i1
t i1 6 t < t i ;
2.1. Harmonic mapping on unit disk Ui ¼ 
i i1

i i
>
>
>
> 1
N0;2 t ttti t i 6 t < tiþ1 ;
>
> 2 iþ1 i
Reference [6] introduced a geometric mapping that maps the >
:
0 otherwise;
unit circular disk to a simply-connected smooth 2D surface. Map-
pings as such can be established in many ways; in [6] a particular ð7Þ
emphasis was given to boundary-based descriptions in order to where N0,1, N1,2, N2,2 are rational Bezier functions recorded in Eq.
avoid interior control points. The starting point is to parameterize (2) in reference [6]. This form is referred to as the reduced Bezier
the unit circle S: jgj = 1 by a rational Bezier curve: circle; an n-arc circle contains exactly n control points. The para-
X
n metric domain of the circle is taken to be [0, n]; the ith arc corre-
g¼ Ui ðtÞQ i ; ð1Þ sponds to the knot interval [ti, tj+1] = [i  1, i]. Some representative
i¼1 examples are shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 2 depicts a basis function in
here Qi are the control points and Ui are the rational Bezier bases. It the 8-point disk.
is known that rational Bezier functions can exactly describe conic
sections, and some admissible parameters for the unit circle are dis- Remark 2.1. Evaluating the basis function Ti requires numerical
cussed in [22], among others. The Bezier form (1) defines a mapping integration over the unit disk, for which a quadrature rule was
c: [a, b] ´ S which is assumed to be one-to-one. One can extend this introduced in [6]. The computation, although costly, is one-time
mapping into the interior to express a point n in the unit disk D as a only because the basis functions are defined in the canonical
linear combination of Qi. In [6], this was achieved using a harmonic domain. In implementation, the function values and derivatives at
mapping. Consider the Laplace equation in the unit circular domain. quadrature points are computed a priori outside element
If one regards a component of g as the prescribed Dirichlet bound- computations.
ary data, then, the corresponding component of the coordinate
function n is the solution of the Laplace equation. Given that such
a solution is represented by Poisson’s integral [23, Chapter 4], we Remark 2.2. The mapping (6) can generate concave cross sections
can conclude: as the one shown in Fig. 3. However, in such cases the mapping
Z may not be one-to-one, and caution must be exercised when
n¼ Hðn; gÞgdsg ; ð2Þ applying such geometries in analysis.
g2C
1jnj2
where Hðn; gÞ ¼ 21p jgnj2
is the Poisson kernel. Upon using (1), we 2.2. NURBS curve
obtain:
X
n
NURBS is widely utilized to represent curves and surfaces. A
n¼ T i ðnÞQ i ; ð3Þ NURBS curve has the form:
i¼1
Pm
where Si;p ðuÞwi Pi
Z xðuÞ ¼ Pi¼1
m ; ð8Þ
i¼1 Si;p ðuÞwi
1
T i ðnÞ :¼ Hðn; gÞUi  c dsg ð4Þ Pm S ðuÞwi
g2C or simply xðuÞ ¼ i¼1 Ri ðuÞPi with Ri ¼ Pmi;p . In (8), Pi are the
S ðuÞwi
j¼1 j;p
are the basis functions. By construction, Ti(n) are solutions of the La- control points, wi are the weights associated with the control points,
place equation and therefore are called harmonic basis, or harmonic and Si, p are the B-spline basis functions of degree p. The B-spline ba-
coordinates. On the boundary, Ti = Ui c1 (Kronecker delta prop- sis functions are defined by a knot vector and the degree of the
erty), indicating that the boundary basis functions are continuously spline. A knot vector is a non-decreasing sequences of coordinates
extended into the interior. Other properties of Ti(n) include partition in the parametric space, written as U = {u1, u2, . . . , um+p+1}. The basis
of unity, positiveness, linear independence, and C1-continuity [6]. functions are defined recursively:
Next, assume that a piecewise smooth closed planar curve C is
u  ui uiþpþ1  u
parameterized, either exactly or approximately, in the Bezier form: Si;p ¼ Si;p1 þ Siþ1;p1 ; ð9Þ
uiþp  ui uiþpþ1  uiþ1
X
n
xðtÞ ¼ Ui ðtÞPi ; x 2 C; ð5Þ where for zero degree:
i¼1 
1 if ui 6 u < uiþ1 ;
where U(t) are the foregoing circular Bezier basis. Eq. (5) defines a Si;0 ¼ ð10Þ
0 otherwise:
mapping f: S ´ C, assumed to be invertible. Let P be the simply-con-
nected domain enclosed by C. Making use of the Harmonic coordi- B-splines and NURBS have been extensively covered in the literature,
nates, we can extend the mapping f into the domain, viz.: see e.g. [14]. Useful properties of B-spline basis are listed therein.
 J. Lu, X. Zhou / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 200 (2011) 233–241 235

Fig. 1. 3-Point, 4-point, 6-point, and 8-point circle and control polygons.

Fig. 2. A basis function in the 8-point disk. The dots on the circle are the physical
knots.

Fig. 4. An elliptical ring with control points.

to a general cylinder. The parametric domain is a straight cylinder

with unit circular cross section and a NURBS knot span
[u1, um+p+1]. If the Jacobian of (11) has the same sign throughout
the domain, the mapping is one-to-one.
Fig. 4 illustrates an elliptical ring represented as a tensor-prod-
uct rod. The cross section is an ellipse by four control points; the
centerline is a circle, defined by four 2nd-degree rational Bezier
arcs of equal length. There are a total of 32 control points. The cen-
terline is defined over the knot vector:
f0; 0; 0; 1; 1; 2; 2; 3; 3; 4; 4; 4g:
The surface knot lines (namely, iso-lines of u = ui on the lateral sur-
face) are also plotted.
Fig. 3. A flower-shape concave section generated by 16 control points.
2.3.1. Properties of the basis functions
The basis functions (12) have the following properties:
2.3. Tensor-product rod
P
1. Partition of unity: a N a ðn; uÞ ¼ 1 8ðn; uÞ 2 X.
Let us assume that the cross sections of a rod-like body are P
2. Linear independence: a ba N a ðn; uÞ ¼ 0 () ba ¼ 0 8ðn; uÞ 2 X.
parameterized by the harmonic mapping (6) with n control points, 1
3. Smoothness: Na is C in the subdomain D  (ui, ui+1), and is
and that the centerline is described as a NURBS curve with m con- (p-k)-times continuously differentiable with respect to u at a
trol points. To parameterize the rod, each centerline control point centerline knot, where k is the multiplicity of that knot.
is replaced by a cross section. Combining the cross sectional and 4. Positiveness: Na(n, u) P 0 " (n, u) 2 X.
axial representations gives the following tensor-product rod:
X
n X
m X
n X
m
  The first property ensures the linear consistency in an isopara-
x¼ T i ðn1 ; n2 ÞRj ðuÞPij :¼ Nij n1 ; n2 ; u Pij ; ð11Þ metric setting. As a consequence, the mapping (11) is affine invari-
i¼1 j¼1 i¼1 j¼1 ant in the sense that applying an affine transformation to the
where control points results in the same affine transformation to the en-
    tire volume.
Nij n1 ; n2 ; u ¼ T i n1 ; n2 Rj ðuÞ: ð12Þ
P Remark 2.3. On the lateral boundary the tensor product (11)
We can write Eq. (11) simply as x ¼ a N a Pa . This equation defines
essentially defines a swept surface for which there are well-
a mapping that mappings the cylindrical domain
  developed techniques for determining the parameters. In general,
X ¼ D  u1 ; umþpþ1 if the control points Pi of the generator and the NURBS parameters of
n o the centerline are known, the volume control points can be
¼ n1  n2  u : ðn1 Þ2 þ ðn2 Þ2 6 1; u1 6 u 6 umþpþ1
populated according to:
236 J. Lu, X. Zhou / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 200 (2011) 233–241
Pij ¼ Cj þ Rj Sj Pi ; ð13Þ
where Cj are the control points of the centerline, Rj and Sj are rota-
tion and stretching tensors. In a forward design, the parameters Pi,
Cj, R, S are user-selected to produce the desired geometry. In an in-
verse design, these parameters need to be determined by fitting. See
[14,24] for further discussions.
Remark 2.4. In deformable modeling the representation (11)
admits a full three-dimensional deformation. In particular, warp-
ing is allowed.
3. Cylindrical element
The cylindrical mapping (11) furnishes a geometric basis for
analysis in the isoparametric setting. In this approach, the refer-
ence (undeformed) geometry and the current (deformed) geome-
try are described by the same basis functions; the latter is
obtained by displacing the control points. The derivation of dis-
crete equations follows that of the standard isoparametric element,
and the details are omitted here.
NURBS geometry has an intrinsic mesh structure. A NURBS
curve consists of several rational Bezier segments that are formally
equivalent to elements. Each segment (i.e., element) corresponds
to a non-empty knot span [ui, ui+1]. The basis function is C1 within
a segment but suffers a loss of continuity at a knot point (e.g. the
element boundaries). Exploiting this feature, it is natural to divide
a tensor-product rod into several elements. Each element is a sub-
cylinder corresponding to a non-empty knot span of the centerline.
A typical element would have the parametric domain:
n o
Xi ¼ n1  n2  uÞ : ðn1 Þ2 þ ðn2 Þ2 6 1; ui 6 u 6 uiþ1 :
A physical element is the image of a parametric element, which is a
cylinder of radius 1 and length ui+1  ui. Depending on the cross sec-
tion and centerline parameters, an element can have variable num-
ber of control points. If one utilizes the n-point reduced Bezier form
for the cross section and a degree-p centerline, then the element
contains n  (p + 1) control points. Fig. 5 shows some examples
of parametric elements with the centerline domain [1, 1].
3.0.2. Quadrature rule
To compute the weak form one needs to integrate functions
over an element. The computation boils down to an integration
over the cylindrical parametric domain. We experimented some
quadrature rules and the one which was found adequate is de-
scribed below.
The cylindrical domain is divided into n-angular slices of 2np
each, where n is the number or circumferential control points.
Within each slice, Gauss quadratures in cylindrical-polar coordi-
Fig. 5. Examples of parametric element: left: 2nd-degree 12-node element, right:
2nd-degree 24-node element.
nates are employed. If one places r quadrature points in the radius
direction, s in the h direction, and t in the longitudinal direction,
the integration of a function F is computed according to:
Z " #
X
n X
r X
s X
t
 
Fdv  F nijk ; ul r ij wrj whk wzl ; ð14Þ
X i¼1 j¼1 k¼1 l¼1
where (nijk, ul) are the position of a Gauss point, rij is the correspond-
ing radius, wrj, whk, and wzl are the weights in r-, h-, and z-coordinate
respectively. This quadrature rule is denoted as n  r  s  t, where
the first number signifies the circumferential divisions.
We utilized the following configuration:
r ¼ 2; s ¼ 1; t ¼ p þ 1:
There are p + 1 layers of quadrature points placed longitudinally.
Each layer contains two rings of quadratures placed uniformly in
the circumferential direction, m point per ring. Numerical tests
(not reported) indicated that this scheme appears to be suffi-
ciently accurate and preserve the rank of the element stiffness
matrix.
4. Numerical Examples
4.1. Patch test: uniaxial stretching of a cylindrical element
A finite strain patch test is conducted. The tested element is the
12-node element (Fig. 5(a)) of unit radius and unit height. The
material is nonlinear elastic with a neo-Hookean energy function:
l j
WðCÞ ¼ ðI1  2 log J  3Þ þ ðlog JÞ2 ; ð15Þ
2 2
where I1 = tr (C) is the first principal invariant of the Green-Lagrang-
ian deformation tensor C = FTF, (l, j) are the material constants, and
J is the determinant of the deformation gradient F. In small strain
limit, l ¼ 2ð1þ
E Em
mÞ, j ¼ ð1þmÞð12mÞ, where E and m are Young’s modulus
and Poisson’s ratio, respectively. In this example, the material
parameters are taken to be E = 106 and m = 0.3.
Lateral deformation tests were conducted previously [6] and
hence, axial loading is considered. The element is loaded axially
by displacement control points. The four control points at the low-
er end are fixed in the axial direction, and the control points at the
opposite end are displaced 0.5 unit axially. A minimal set of con-
straints just enough to eliminate rigid body motions is placed in
the x- and y-directions. The axial displacements of the mid four
control points are funded to be 0.25, and the axial strain
1
ðC ZZ  1) has a uniform value 0.625 (Fig. 6). The x- and y-displace-
2
ments of all control points agree with the analytical solution with-
in the machine precision.
Fig. 6. Uniaxial stretch of a cylindrical element: (a) deformed element; (b) strain
distribution.
 J. Lu, X. Zhou / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 200 (2011) 233–241 237

Fig. 7. Helical spring: (a) NURBS mesh with 4 elements per turn, (b) FEM model.

Table 1
Reaction force versus refinement (FEM result: 6.01). Row: number of elements per
turn in the longitudinal direction. Column: number of control points along the
circumference.

4 8 12 16 20 24 Fig. 9. Turbine blade profile.

4 8.23403 6.30259 6.15576 6.12637 6.11772 6.11448

8 8.21822 6.29145 6.14359 6.11389 6.10511 6.10181
16 8.21819 6.29142 6.14356 6.11385 6.10507 6.10177 we introduced a finite element model (Fig. 7(b)) that has in total
7081 nodes (6048 elements). The 8-node enhanced strained ele-
ment [25] is used. The finite element model gives a total reaction
force of 6.0100 in the z-direction. A convergence study is con-
4.2. Helical spring
ducted by increasing both the circumferential control points the
longitudinal knot divisions. The results for various mesh configu-
To quantitatively assess the cylindrical element, we simulated a
rations are presented in Table 1. Evidently, the number of cir-
helix spring under axial stretching and made a comparison with fi-
cumferential control points has little effect on the solution,
nite element analysis. The spring, as shown in Fig. 7, has three full
although small improvement can be observed. In contrast,
coils with a mean coil radius of 6 and a pitch of 2.60258; and the
increasing the longitudinal divisions leads to significant improve-
wire radius is 1. The centerline (helix) is a degree two NURBS
ments. For example, for the case with 4 circumferential control
curve, initially constructed from the knot vector:
points and 24 elements per turn, the result is 6.11448 (about
f0;0;0;1;1;2;2;3;3;4;4;5;5;6;6;7;7;8;8;9;9;10;10;11;11;12;12;12g; 1.6% difference to the FEM value). Fig. 8 shows the corresponding
von Mises stress distribution and a comparison with the finite
and nine control point per coil, with weights: element stress result.


1 1 1
1; pffiffiffi ; 1; pffiffiffi ; . . . ; 1; pffiffiffi ; 1 :
2 2 2
Each coil contains 4 cylindrical elements. Due to the repeated knot
values, the NURBS basis functions are C0 continuous across the ele-
ment boundaries.
The same neo-Hookean model is used for the simulation. The
lower end of the helix is fixed while the upper end is pulled up-
wards with a displacement of 2.0. The initial NURBS model con-
tains four 12-node element per turn (Fig. 7(a)). For comparison,
4.3. Turbine blade modal analysis
The blades of small wind turbines are often a solid body which,
within the proposed paradigm, may be described as a rod. Fig. 9
shows a cross section profile described by 16 control points. The
blade in Fig. 10 is constructed by extruding a cross section along
the longitudinal axis while twisting the pitch angle and reducing
the cross section dimensions at constant rates. The initial NURBS
model contains a single element containing 16  3 = 48 control

50.0
50.0
45.0
45.0
40.0 40.0
35.0
35.0
30.0
30.0
25.0
25.0
20.0
20.0
15.0
15.0
10.0
10.0

5.0 5.0

Fig. 8. The von Mises stress: (a) cylindrical element, 24 elements per turn; (b) finite element. The degree-of-freedom numbers in these models are 1740 and 21243,
respectively.
238 J. Lu, X. Zhou / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 200 (2011) 233–241

Fig. 10. Turbine blade, two views.

One is the line-of-action model which describes a muscle as a 3D

Fig. 11. The 10-element NURBS mesh of the blade.
points. The parameters are recorded in Appendix A. The model is
subsequently refined by knot insertion in the longitudinal direc-
tion. A NURBS mesh containing 10 elements is shown in Fig. 11.
The material is linear elastic, with E = 3  106, m = 0.3, and density
q = 40.
Table 2 presents the natural frequencies of the first ten modes,
computed from the rod model and a comparative finite element
model. The finite element mesh contains 1035 nodes (686 8-node
elements). In comparison, the finest NURBS mesh (30 elements)
contains 32  16 = 512 control points. Clearly this level of mesh
density is not necessary as converged results are obtained with
20 elements (352 control points). The first five frequencies are in
good agreement with the finite element results. The finite element
analysis utilized the enhanced strain element; the pure displace-
ment 8-node element is overly stiff for this problem due to shear
locking. The modal shapes for the first ten modes are depicted in
Fig. 12.
Fig. 13 shows the convergence behavior for the first three
modes, taking the 30-element model as the reference. The
  vertical
axis corresponds to the logarithmic errors log xx  1 . A cubic
ref
rate of convergence is observed.
5. Skeletal muscle modeling
Slender muscles present a good example of soft biological or-
gans that may be effectively described by cylindrical elements.
Existing skeletal muscle models typically fall into two categories.
curve. This type of model is typically used for muscle force analysis
[26]. The other is the full scale 3D finite element model which in
general is used to study isolated muscles with emphasis on muscle
stress [27,28]. The challenges in modeling skeletal muscles lie in
capturing the complicated behavior and geometry. The line of ac-
tion model can only capture the gross behavior but incapable of
describing the geometry and muscle stress. Full scale finite ele-
ment simulations could be overly expensive especially when deal-
ing with muscle groups. When efficiency is of primary importance,
it is critical to balance physical realism and computational effi-
ciency. In [29,30], the present authors proposed to use NURBS-
based isogeometric approach for muscle analysis. This method
opens a pathway for a high-fidelity and high efficiency modeling
of muscles.
Muscle tissue has a highly complex material behavior: it is ac-
tive, nonlinear, incompressible, anisotropic, and hyperelastic
[31,27,28]. The microstructure of muscle is determined by the
arrangement of the contractile elements (muscle fibers) and pas-
sive background tissue within a muscle. At the continuum scale,
muscles are modeled as hyperelastic, anisotropic material embed-
ded with active contractile fibers. In this study, the muscle is as-
sumed to be hyperelastic solid with the following strain energy
function:
WðCÞ ¼ W matrix ðCÞ þ W fiber ðCÞ: ð16Þ
The first term is the strain energy associated with the passive
ground substance and the second term represents the active and
passive muscle fiber strain energy. Following [28], the muscle fiber
strain energy assumes the form:
W fiber ðCÞ ¼ W act ðk; aÞ þ W pass ðkÞ; ð17Þ
where Wact(k, a) and Wpass(k) are, respectively, the active and pas-
sive strain energy of the muscle fiber. In addition to a dependence
on the fiber stretch k, the active response is also regulated by a sca-
lar parameter a representing the level of activation (which is con-
trolled by neural excitation). The derivative of Wfiber(k, a) with
respect to the stretch k is defined as

Table 2
The first ten frequencies. N: number of NURBS elements.

Modes Frequencies
N=5 N = 10 N = 15 N = 20 N = 25 N = 30 FEM
1 0.19136 0.18857 0.18812 0.18796 0.187874 0.187824 0.1909
2 0.95579 0.79195 0.77924 0.77668 0.775798 0.775383 0.8018
3 1.44902 1.43379 1.43130 1.43032 1.42979 1.42945 1.3674
4 2.49828 2.06955 1.96951 1.95178 1.94657 1.94448 2.0630
5 3.46974 2.46023 2.45053 2.44705 2.44552 2.44473 2.2571
6 5.30767 4.20237 3.76425 3.69110 3.67126 3.66391 4.0258
7 5.63743 5.09790 5.06690 5.05624 5.05173 5.04947 4.4984
8 9.64319 5.53363 5.51095 5.50019 5.49542 5.49304 5.3152
9 10.4882 7.63507 6.24509 6.02659 5.97116 5.9518 6.8215
10 10.7239 8.16530 8.06399 8.03176 8.01842 8.01226 7.2485
 J. Lu, X. Zhou / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 200 (2011) 233–241 239

−1
ω1
−2 ω2
ω3

−3

1
−4
3

Log(error)
−5

−6

−7

−8

−9
1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3 3.2
Log(N)

Fig. 13. Rate of convergence for the first three frequencies. N: number of NURBS
elements.

Fig. 14. Biceps initial configuration.

where rmax is the maximum active stress that can be generated by

the muscle fiber, m1 and m2 are the coefficients for the passive
property of muscle fiber. With these terms, the well-known nonlin-
ear stress–strain relationship of muscle fibers [32,33] can be mod-
Fig. 12. Modal shapes for the first ten modes.
eled at the continuum level. Further derivations of the stress
tensors are ignored here. More details can be found in [30].
For this example, the stain energy function of the ground (ma-
oW act ðk; aÞ h i trix) material, Wmatrix, takes the same form as neo-Hookean mate-
¼ armax 1  4ð1  kÞ2 ; ð18Þ rial with E = 30 N/cm2, m = 0.49. Other muscle material parameters
ok
are: m1 = 35, m2 = 0.5, and rmax = 30 N/cm2. To emulate the mus-
and
( cle–tendon complex, the first and the last element are modeled
oW pass ðkÞ m1 kðem2 ðk
2
1Þ
 1Þ; k > 1; as tendon and the mid three elements are modeled with active
¼ ð19Þ muscle material. The tendon is modeled by the ground material
ok 0; k 6 1;
alone but ten times stiffer.
240 J. Lu, X. Zhou / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 200 (2011) 233–241

ber direction is (0, 1, 0), which is approximately aligned with the

muscle action line (which links the two end surfaces). The two
end surfaces of the muscle solid are fixed to keep the muscle length
unchanged. The contact condition between the two branches is de-
4 30 scribed using the isogeometric contact formulation [34]. Note here
25
we only handle the contact between the muscle elements because
3
initially the two lower tendons largely overlap each other (we in-
20
tend to keep them so) and the two upper tendons are far apart.
2 15
We employ explicit dynamics method for time integration and
10 the time step is 2.5  105 second. In the simulation, we gradually
1
5
(linearly) increase the muscle activation up to the maximum level
(i.e. a = 1) in the first 100 steps (<0.25 ms) and then keep it con-
0 0
stant at the maximum level. Fig. 15(a)–(c) present the deformed
muscle shapes and von Mises stresses at 5, 10, and 15 ms, respec-
tively. The muscle belly bulges up due to fiber contraction and con-
sequently the stress increases initially. The maximum stress
happens at the two tendon sections due to their small cross section
area. We utilize significant numerical damping so that muscle
reaches equilibrium (almost no further deformation) at 250 ms.
The final state is shown in Fig. 16(a). As can be observed, the stress
level in overall is slightly lower than that at 0.25 ms. This is be-
cause the muscle fiber has a higher contraction strength at low
30 contraction strains. As the muscle fiber contracts shortens, its
capacity to generating force decreases although the activation is
25
kept at the same level [30].
20
For comparison, we also simulated the same with FEM, for
15 which a tetrahedron mesh of the muscle with 7413 nodes
10
(25315 elements) is used. As in the cylindrical element approach,
contact is defined between the two muscle bellies. The equilibrium
5
state (again at 250 ms) from the FEM simulation is shown in
0
Fig. 16(b). By comparison, it can be seen that stress distributions
are in good qualitative agreement with each other.

6. Concluding remarks

We introduced a new approach for analyzing rod-like struc-

Fig. 15. The von Mises stress (plotted on the deformed configuration) at (a) 5 ms;
tures. The method is marked by the utility of CAD and CG geome-
(b) 10 ms; and (c) 15 ms.
tries; a rod is represented as a tensor-product volume using
harmonic coordinates and NURBS. Reduction of dimension is
achieved at the geometry level, by using only surface control
points. This representation preserves the geometry of the rod and
smoothness. The model eliminates the conventional assumption
of rigid cross section and hence, allows for the consideration of lat-
eral deformations and lateral contact. This feature is significant for
30
analyzing slender soft structures which normally undergo large
25 lateral deformations. In the traditional paradigm, structures as
20 such are treated as a three-dimensional continuum.
15
Appendix A. Parameters of the turbine blade
10

5
The generator (the root cross section) are parameterized by the
0 following control points:
2 3
ð1:; 0:0708625; 0:Þ; ð0:847759; 0:177017; 0:Þ;
6 ð0:566454; 0:227835; 0:Þ; ð0:198912; 0:225; 0:Þ; 7
6 7
6 7
6 ð0:198912; 0:18125; 0:Þ; ð0:566454; 0:116567; 0:Þ; 7
6 7
6 ð0:847759; 0:0531051; 0:Þ; ð1:; 0:00994562; 0:Þ; 7
6 7
6 7:
6 ð1:; 0:00397825; 0:Þ; ð0:847759; 0:00566454; 0:Þ; 7
Fig. 16. The deformed configuration and von Mises stress at equilibrium (250 ms): 6 7
(a) cylindrical element, (b) FEM. 6 ð0:566454; 0:; 0:Þ; ð0:198912; 0:01; 0:Þ; 7
6 7
6 7
4 ð0:198912; 0:020:Þ; ð0:566454; 0:0254328; 0:Þ; 5
ð0:847759; 0:0226582; 0:Þ; ð1:  0:00994562; 0:Þ
The biceps in Fig. 14 are described by cylindrical elements. Each
branch contains 5 elements, with 8 control points for the cross sec- For the centerline, the initial NURBS parameters are
tion and a quadratic NURBS centerline. There are a total of
u ¼ f0; 0; 0; 1; 1; 1g; p ¼ 2; w ¼ f1; 1; 1g;
7  8 = 56 control points in each branch. We assume the muscle fi-
 J. Lu, X. Zhou / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 200 (2011) 233–241 241

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