The computational modeling of thin-walled structures based on isogeometric analysis (IGA), non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS), and Kirchhoff–Love (KL) shell formulations has attracted significant research attention in recent years. While these methods offer numerous benefits over the traditional finite element approach, including exact representation of the geometry, naturally satisfied high-order continuity within each NURBS patch, and computationally efficient rotation-free formulations, they also present a number of challenges in modeling real-world engineering structures of considerable complexity. Specifically, these NURBS-based engineering models are usually comprised of numerous patches, with discontinuous derivatives, non-conforming discretizations, and non-watertight connections at their interfaces. Moreover, the analysis of such structures often requires the full stress and strain tensors (i.e., including the transverse normal and shear components) for subsequent failure analysis and remaining life prediction. Despite the efficiency provided by the KL shell, the formulation cannot accurately predict the response in the transverse directions due to its kinematic assumptions. In this work, a penalty-based formulation for the blended coupling of KL and continuum shells is presented. The proposed approach embraces both the computational efficiency of KL shells and the availability of the full-scale stress/strain tensors of continuum shells where needed by modeling critical structural components using continuum shells and other components using KL shells. The proposed method enforces the displacement and rotational continuities in a variational manner and is applicable to non-conforming and non-smooth interfaces. The efficacy of the developed method is demonstrated through a number of benchmark studies with a variety of analysis configurations, including linear and nonlinear analyses, matching and non-matching discretizations, and isotropic and composite materials. Finally, an aircraft horizontal stabilizer is considered to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed blended shells to real-world engineering structures of significant complexity.

近年来，基于等几何分析 (IGA)、非均匀有理 B 样条 (NURBS) 和 Kirchhoff-Love (KL) 壳公式的薄壁结构计算建模引起了广泛的研究关注。虽然这些方法比传统的有限元方法有很多好处，包括几何的精确表示、每个 NURBS 补丁内自然满足的高阶连续性以及计算效率高的无旋转公式，但它们在模拟真实模型时也存在许多挑战相当复杂的世界工程结构。具体来说，这些基于 NURBS 的工程模型通常由许多补丁组成，在它们的接口处具有不连续的导数、不符合要求的离散化和非水密连接。而且，应变张量（即，包括横向法向和剪切分量）用于后续的失效分析和剩余寿命预测。尽管 KL 壳提供了效率，但由于其运动学假设，该公式无法准确预测横向响应. 在这项工作中，提出了 KL 和连续壳混合耦合的基于惩罚的公式。所提出的方法包括 KL 壳的计算效率和连续壳的全尺寸应力/应变张量的可用性，通过使用连续壳对关键结构部件和使用 KL 壳的其他部件进行建模，需要时。所提出的方法以变分方式强制执行位移和旋转连续性，并且适用于不合格和不光滑的界面。所开发方法的有效性通过具有各种分析配置的大量基准研究得到证明，包括线性和非线性分析、匹配和非匹配离散化以及各向同性和复合材料。最后，