An efficient Galerkin meshfree analysis of shear deformable cylindrical panels

Abstract

A Galerkin meshfree method is presented for analyzing shear deformable cylindrical panels. Based upon the analogy between the cylindrical panel and the curved beam a pure bending mode for cylindrical panel is rationally constructed. The meshfree approximation employed herein is characterized by an enhanced moving least square or reproducing kernel basis function that can exactly represent the pure bending mode and thus meets the requirement of Kirchhoff mode reproducing condition. The variational form is discretized using the efficient stabilized conforming nodal integration with a smoothed nodal gradient based curvature. The resulting meshfree formulation satisfies the integration constraint for bending exactness. Moreover, it is shown here that the smoothed gradient preserves several desired properties which are valid for the standard gradient obtained by direct differentiation, such as partition of nullity and reproduction of a constant strain field. The efficacy of the proposed approach is demonstrated by two benchmark cylindrical panel examples.