Volumetric locking in the Element Free Galerkin method

A new formulation of the Element Free Galerkin (EFG) method is developed fo r the modelling of incompressible materials. Beginning with a mixed variati onal principle, a selective reduced integration procedure is developed by i mplementing nodal quadrature. Numerical examples are provided which compare the performance of the proposed technique to the standard EFG approximatio n. These studies illustrate the capability of the new formulation to elimin ate volumetric locking. For the standard method, however, the degree of vol umetric locking is shown to be a function of the local support sizes (domai ns of influence) of the EFG shape functions. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.