The Finite Cell Method for linear thermoelasticity

Abstract The recently introduced Finite Cell Method (FCM) combines the fictitious domain idea with the benefits of high-order Finite Elements. While previous publications concentrated on single-field applications, this paper demonstrates that the advantages of the method carry over to the multi-physical context of linear thermoelasticity. The ability of the method to converge with exponential rates is illustrated in detail with a benchmark problem. A second example shows that the Finite Cell Method correctly captures the thermoelastic state of a complex problem from engineering practice. Both examples additionally verify that, also for two-field problems, Dirichlet boundary conditions can be weakly imposed on non-conformi ng meshes by the proposed extension of Nitsche's Method.