A Coupled Element-Free Galerkin and Infinite Element Method for Elastostatic Problems on Unbounded Domain

A new coupling algorithm that combines Element-Free Galerkin (EFG) method, one of meshfree methods, and Infinite Elements (IE) is developed in this study to solve the elastostatic problems with unbounded domain. Mapped infinite elements (mapped IE) and decay function infinite elements (decay IE) are coupled with the EFG method in the developed algorithm: In case of the mapped IE, a modified Jacobian matrix is used for the integration of unbounded domain whereas in decay IE, Gauss-Laguerre integration is used. The approximated displacement functions in the interface of EFG and IE regions are defined by using appropriate technique or well defined ramp function to preserve the continuity and linear consistency on the interface. Several benchmark problems are numerically examined to verify the effectiveness and accuracy of the developed algorithm. The numerical results show that the method works well for the elastic problems with infinite boundaries.