$C^1$-smooth isogeometric spline functions of general degree over planar mixed meshes: The case of two quadratic mesh elements

Abstract

Splines over triangulations and splines over quadrangulations (tensor product splines) are two common ways to extend bivariate polynomials to splines. However, combination of both approaches leads to splines defined over mixed triangle and quadrilateral meshes using the isogeometric approach. Mixed meshes are especially useful for representing complicated geometries obtained e.g. from trimming. As (bi-)linearly parameterized mesh elements are not flexible enough to cover smooth domains, we focus in this work on the case of planar mixed meshes parameterized by (bi-)quadratic geometry mappings. In particular we study in detail the space of $C^1$-smooth isogeometric spline functions of general polynomial degree over two such mixed mesh elements. We present the theoretical framework to analyze the smoothness conditions over the common interface for all possible configurations of mesh elements. This comprises the investigation of the dimension as well as the construction of a basis of the corresponding $C^1$-smooth isogeometric spline space over the domain described by two elements. Several examples of interest are presented in detail.