-curved finite elements and applications to plate and shell problems

Many thin-plate and thin-shell problems are set on plane reference domains with a curved boundary. Their approximation by conforming finite-elements methods requires ¹-curved finite elements entirely compatible with the associated ¹-rectilinear finite elements. In this contribution we introduce a ¹-curved finite element compatible with the P₅-Argyris element, we study its approximation properties, and then, we use such an element to approximate the solution of thin-plate or thin-shell problems set on a plane-curved boundary domain. We prove the convergence and we get a priori asymptotic error estimates which show the very high degree of accuracy of the method. Moreover we obtain criteria to observe when choosing the numerical integration schemes in order to preserve the order of the error estimates obtained for exact integration.