Isogeometric collocation for Kirchhoff-Love plates and shells

Since Kirchhoff-Love plate theory yields a fourth-order formulation, two boundary conditions are required at each location on the contour, generating some conflicts at the corners where there are more equations than needed. To remedy this overdetermination, we provide priority and averaging rules that cover all the possible combinations of adjacent edge boundary conditions (i.e. the clamped, simply-supported, symmetric and free supports). Greville and alternative superconvergent points are used for NURBS basis of even and odd degrees, respectively. For square, circular, and annular flat plates, convergence orders are found to be in agreement with a-priori error estimates. The proposed isogeometric collocation method is then validated and benchmarked against a Galerkin implementation by studying a set of problems involving Kirchhoff-Love shells.