Overview on Meshless Methods
Anand G Ganganagoudar
CE14MTECH11010
(Graduate Student)
Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
Mesh less methods :An overview
Outline
Introduction
Need for mesh free method
Working Principle
Element free Galerkin method
History and Development
Issues with meshless methods
Conclusions
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Why the need for Mesh Free Methods?
Element Distortion Crack growth simulation Breakage of materials
Image source: [Link]
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Why the need for Mesh Free Methods?
High cost in Creating Mesh
For an engineer the concern is more the manpower time,
and less the computer time.
Low accuracy of stresses
Stress obtained in FEM are discontinuous at the interface Complex geometry
of two elements. Post processing must be employed to
recover the exact stresses.
Difficulty in Adoptive meshing
To ensure the accuracy of the solution adaptive Techniques
are employed in FEM. However for a complex 3D Geometry
computational cost is more.
Image source: [Link]
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Mesh Free Method
Mesh free method is a method used to establish system of
algebraic equations for the whole problem domain without
the use of a predefined mesh for the domain discretization.
Objective of mesh free method is to get rid of meshing and
remeshing the structure.
Physical domain is discretized into set of nodes. No
information is required between the nodes.
Subdomain is a influence domain of a point of interest Domain Discretization
beyond which shape function of that point vanishes
completely.
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Mesh less methods :An overview
FEM Vs Mfree Method
Reason FEM MFree
Mesh Yes No
Shape function Piecewise linear(Generally) Any desired order
Adaptive
Difficult for 3D problems Easier
analysis
Specific treatment
Imposition of BC Easy and Standard
required
More compared to
Accuracy Less
FEM
Stage of
Well developed Infant
development
Commercial
packages
Many Few M Free
Domain Discretization
Slower compared to
Post processing Fast Image source: Belytschko(1998)
FEM
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Working Principle
Define the geometry
Discretize the domain into set of nodes
select the approximate method
Weight function
[Link] [Link] generation
Shape function
Numerical integration
Local stiffness matrix for sub domain
Global stiffness matrix
Enforcing the essential boundary conditions
Solve for displacements
Strains and stresses 3. Subdomain 4. Shape function
Post processing
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Element free Galerkin method
Developed by belytschko (1994) to simulate the crack problems
It employs Moving Least Square Method of approximation
Cubic Spline Function is used as weight function
Requires a background mesh to perform numerical integration
Not a truly mesh less method
Lagrange multipliers to enforce essential boundary conditions
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Moving Least Square Approximation(MLS)
Minimizing the weighted norm
source: Belytschko(1998)
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Moving Least Square Approximation(MLS)
Unknown Coefficients
Approximate function
Shape function
Weighting function not defined yet??
source: Belytschko(1998)
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Weight function: Cubic Spline Function
d-Radius
Image source: Dolbo (1998)
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Numerical integration
To evaluate the integral it is necessary to define
the background cell.
Gauss quadrature rule is employed to perform
integration numerically.
Essential boundary conditions are cannot be
enforced directly there fore LaGrange
multipliers are used
Stiffness matrix will also have additional terms
due to LaGrange multipliers.
Back ground cell
Image source: Dolbo (1998)
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Mesh less methods :An overview
History and Development
Mfree Method Proposed by Year Key Features
Smoothened particle Lagrange interpolation
Monaghan and Gingold 1977
Hydrodynamics(SPH) unstable solutions
Diffused Element method Nayroles and Touzot 1992 Galerkin method (MLS)
Element-Free Galerkin method Belytschko 1994 Global Weak form
Local Petrov-Galerkin method Atulri nad Zhu 1998 Local weak form
kronecker delta
Radial Basis Functions method Kansa 1991
Finite Point Method Onate 1996 Collocation
Polynomial
Point Interpolation Method Liu 2001
interpolation
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Limitations of mesh free method
Enforcing essential boundary conditions is not straight forward. It requires
special treatment to enforce the essential boundary conditions such as
LaGrange multipliers, penalty method etc.
Size of stiffness matrix is more therefore it takes more time to evaluate the
matrix.
Some claim that no proper mathematical analysis has been performed on
these methods.
Current state of art
Natural element method
Iso geometric method etc.
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Mesh less methods :An overview
Conclusions
Mesh Free Methods are the response to the limitations of Finite Element
Methods.
Many Mfree methods have found good applications, and shown very
good potential to become powerful numerical tools
The implementation of Mesh Free Methods differs from Finite Element
Methods node generation.
Different techniques are proposed based on shape function ,Weighting function,
numerical integration and essential BC enforcement.
After all Mfree methods are also approximate methods, therefore Evolution of
new techniques with increasing sophistication in this domain is quite natural…
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Mesh less methods :An overview
References
• T. Belytschko, Y.Y. Lu, [Link], Element-free Galerkin methods, International
Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering vol 37, 229-256, 1994.
• T. Belytschko, Y. Krongauz, D. Organ, M. Fleming, P. Krysl, Meshless methods:
an overview and recent developments, Computer methods in applied mechanics
andengineering, vol 139, 3-47, 1996
• J Dolbo, T. Belytschko An introduction to element free galerkin methods,vol 5
,3,207-242, 1998
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THANK YOU…..
