The aim of this manuscript is to give a practical overview of meshless methods (for solid mechanics) based on global weak forms through a simple and well-structured MATLAB code, to illustrate our discourse. The source code is available for download on our website and should help students and researchers get started with some of the basic meshless methods; it includes intrinsic and extrinsic enrichment, point collocation methods, several boundary condition enforcement schemes and corresponding test cases. Several one and two-dimensional examples in elastostatics are given including weak and strong discontinuities and testing different ways of enforcing essential boundary conditions.

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A Nitche's method is presented to couple non-conforming two and three dimensional NURBS (Non Uniform Rational B-splines) patches in the context of isogeometric analysis (IGA). We present results for elastic stress analyses under the static condition of two and three dimensional NURBS geometries. The contribution fills the gap in the literature and enlarges the applicability of NURBS-based isogeometric analysis.

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To date, the SFEM has only been investigated for bilinear and Wachspress approximations and is limited to linear reproducing conditions. The goal of this paper is to extend the strain smoothing to higher order elements and to investigate numerically in which condition strain smoothing is beneficial to accuracy and convergence of enriched finite element approximations. We focus on three widely used enrichment schemes, namely: (a) weak discontinuities; (b) strong discontinuities; (c) near-tip linear elastic fracture mechanics functions. The main conclusion is that strain smoothing in enriched approximation is only beneficial when the enrichment functions are polynomial (cases (a) and (b)), but that non-polynomial enrichment of type (c) lead to inferior methods compared to the standard enriched FEM (e.g. XFEM).

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A three dimensional meshfree method for modeling arbitrary crack initiation and crack growth in reinforced concrete structure is presented. This meshfree method is based on a partition of unity concept and formulated for geometrically nonlinear problems. The crack kinematics are obtained by enriching the solution space in order to capture the correct crack kinematics. A cohesive zone model is used after crack initiation. The reinforcement modeled by truss or beam elements is connected by a bond model to the concrete. We applied the method to model the fracture of several reinforced concrete structures and compared the results to experimental data.

Partition of unity methods, such as the extended finite element method (XFEM) allow discontinuities to be simulated independently of the mesh [1]. This eliminates the need for the mesh to be aligned with the discontinuity or cumbersome re-meshing, as the discontinuity evolves. However, to compute the stiffness matrix of the elements intersected by the discontinuity, a subdivision of the elements into quadrature subcells aligned with the discontinuity is commonly adopted. In this paper, we use a simple integration technique, proposed for polygonal domains [2] to suppress the need for element subdivision. Numerical results presented for a few benchmark problems in the context of linear elastic fracture mechanics and a multi-material problem, show that the proposed method yields accurate results. Owing to its simplicity, the proposed integration technique can be easily integrated in any existing code.