A fast meshfree technique for the coupled thermoelasticity problem

Abstract

This paper concerns a new and fast meshfree method for the linear coupled thermoelasticity problem. The resulting algorithm provides an attractive alternative to existing mesh-based and meshfree methods. Compared with mesh-based methods, the proposed technique inherits the advantages of meshfree methods allowing the use of scattered points instead of a predefined mesh. Compared with the existing meshfree methods, the proposed technique is truly meshless, requiring no background mesh for both trial and test spaces and, more importantly, numerical integrations are done over low-degree polynomials rather than complicated shape functions. In fact, this method mimics the known advantages of both meshless and finite element methods, where in the former triangulation is not required for approximation and in the latter the stiffness and mass matrices are set up by integration against simple polynomials. The numerical results of the present work concern the thermal and mechanical shocks in a finite domain considering classical coupled theory of thermoelasticity.