Volumetric locking in the element free Galerkin method

A new formulation of the Element Free Galerkin (EFG) method is developed for the modelling of incompressible materials. Beginning with a mixed variational principle, a selective reduced integration procedure is developed by implementing nodal quadrature. Numerical examples are provided which compare the performance of the proposed technique to the standard EFG approximation. These studies illustrate the capability of the new formulation to eliminate volumetric locking. For the standard method, however, the degree of volumetric locking is shown to be a function of the local support sizes (domains of influence) of the EFG shape functions. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.