Abstract
Isogeometric Analysis has the potential to achieve efficient integration of CAD and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) by introducing accurate shape representation in analysis. The success of isogeometric analysis will depend on changes both in CAD and FEA. On the one hand, CAD has to provide an approach for transforming volumes described by their inner and outer hulls to complete trivariate descriptions suited for analysis. On the other hand, FEA has to exploit the full potential of multivariate NURBS representations and algorithms. Both CAD and isogeometric analysis need better local refinement methods, and should thus support T-splines and their generalizations such as rational locally refined splines