Avoiding shear locking for the Timoshenko beam problem via isogeometric collocation methods

In this work we study isogeometric collocation methods for the Timoshenko beam problem, considering both mixed and displacement-based formulations. In particular, we show that locking-free solutions are obtained for mixed methods independently on the approximation degrees selected for the unknown fields. Moreover, several numerical tests are provided in order to support our theoretical results and to show the good behavior and the flexibility of isogeometric collocation methods in this context. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.