A locking-free stabilized kinematic EFG model for plane strain limit analysis

An element free Galerkin (EFG) based formulation for limit analysis of rigid-perfectly plastic plane strain problems is presented. In the paper it is demonstrated that volumetric locking and instability problems can be avoided by using a stabilized conforming nodal integration scheme. Furthermore, the stabilized EFG method described allows stable and accurate solutions to be obtained with minimal computational effort. The discrete kinematic formulation is cast in the form of a second-order cone problem, allowing efficient interior-point solvers to be used to obtain solutions. Finally, the performance of the stabilized EFG method is illustrated by considering several numerical examples. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.