Forced vibrations of a cantilever beam using radial point interpolation methods: A comparison study

Abstract

Meshless methods are a type of numerical method used to simulate continuum mechanics problems. These methods have been applied to several types of problems, there are a few works using meshless method focused on dynamic problems, but most works study static loading conditions. The current work aims at using two different meshless methods, the Radial Point Interpolation Method (RPIM) and the Natural Neighbours RPIM (NNRPIM), in a dynamic problem, specifically forced vibrations. This problem requires time integration, therefore three different time integration methods have also been tested, namely: the Central Difference Method (CDM), the Wilson method, and the Newmark method. The CDM is an explicit method, while the other two are implicit. A discretization study was performed to assess the ideal nodal discretization before the numerical and time integration methods are validated. For the implicit methods, different time step lengths were also tested. In the final example damping was introduced. The results prove the validity of the two meshless methods by having similar results to the Finite Element Method (FEM) using the three distinct time integration methods, different loading conditions, and damping.