ON ACCURACY OF THE ELEMENT-FREE GALERKIN (EFG) METHOD IN MODELING INCOMPRESSIBLE FLUID FLOW

Element-free Galerkin method (EFG) has been introduced in the nineties of last century (see e.g. Belytschko et al. 1994, 1996). It represents a mesh-free method, particularly suitable for problems where the FE method would need a remeshing procedure. The EFG has been mainly used in solid mechanics for problems involving change of the boundary, as in case of fracture propagation. We have investigated applicability of the EFG in modeling incompressible fluid flow, especially the solution accuracy when various numbers of free points and integration schemes are employed. In this report we present our findings by analyzing solution of simple fluid flow examples: flow on a plate and flow in a cavity.