Free-vibration analysis of shells via a linearly conforming radial point interpolation method (LC-RPIM)

In this paper, free-vibration analysis of shells is carried out using a linearly conforming radial point interpolation method (LC-RPIM). The present formulation is based on the first-order shear deformation shell theory. A set of arbitrarily distributed nodes in local support domains is selected to perform interpolation, and radial and polynomial basis functions are employed to construct shape functions with Delta function property. Nodal integration, which is enforced by a strain-smoothing stabilization technique, is used to restore conformability and improve the accuracy of solutions. Comparisons of current solutions are made with existing results available in literature and good agreements are obtained. Numerical examples demonstrate that the present approach provides very stable and accurate results.