CIVL 7970-FALL 2019

FINITE ELEMENT
METHODS II
ASSIGNMENT #4

Pablo Esteban Hurtado Ojeda

peh0023@auburn.edu
09-09-2019
1 MESH FREE METHOD
1.1 Mathematical Basis
Mesh free method is used to establish systems of algebraic equations for the whole problem domain without
the use of predefined mesh for the domain discretization.
The basic steps in Mesh free formulation are the same as FEM except for the formations of shape functions
and imposition of boundary conditions. The basic approximations for a field variable u in any boundary value
problem can be written as:
𝑛

𝑢ℎ (𝑥) = ∑ 𝜙𝑖 (𝑋)𝑢𝑖 = 𝜙 𝑇 (𝑋)𝑈𝑠

𝑖=1

Where 𝜙𝑖 are the shape functions and the 𝑢𝑖 ′𝑠 are the nodal values at particle 𝑖 located at position 𝑥𝑖 and
𝑛 is the set of nodes included in the local support of domain for which 𝜙𝑖 (𝑋) ≠ 0.

1.2 Suitable Problem Categories

 Solid Mechanics
 Fracture Analysis Mechanics
 Crack propagation
 Moving Boundary Problems
1.3 Potential Advantages And Disadvantages
1. ADVANTAGES
 Immune to mesh distortion effects
 Effective for complex problems, such as large deformation, fracture propagation simulation
and impact-induced failure.
2. DISADVANTAGES
 Excessive Computing time and programming effort
1.4 Research Paper
Smoothed FE-Meshfree method for solid mechanics problems:
Abstract
This paper presents a smoothed FE-Meshfree (SFE-Meshfree) method for solving solid mechanics problems.
The system stiffness matrix is calculated via a strain-smoothing technique with the composite shape function,
which is based on the partition of unity-based method, combing the classical isoparametric quadrilateral
function and radial-polynomial basis function. The corresponding Gauss integration in the element is replaced
by line integration along the edges of the smoothing cells, so no derivatives of the composite shape functions
are needed during the field gradient estimation process. Several numerical examples including an automobile
mechanical component are employed to examine the presented method. Calculation results indicate that
SFE-Meshfree can obtain a high convergence rate and accuracy without introducing additional degrees of
freedom to the system. In addition, it is also more tolerant with respect to mesh distortion. The volumetric
locking problem is also explored in this paper under a selective smoothing integration scheme.

1.5 References
Chen, Guangsong, et al. "Smoothed FE-Meshfree method for solid mechanics problems." Acta
Mechanica 229.6 (2018): 2597-2618.

Garg, Sahil, and Mohit Pant. "Meshfree methods: a comprehensive review of applications." International
Journal of Computational Methods 15.04 (2018): 1830001.