Superconvergent gradient smoothing meshfree collocation method

Abstract A superconvergent meshfree collocation method with smoothed nodal gradients is presented. In this method, the first order smoothed gradients of meshfree shape function are constructed through a meshfree interpolation of the standard derivatives of meshfree shape function, while the second order smoothed gradients are computed through directly differentiating the first order smoothed gradients. It is noted that the second order smoothed gradients evaluated at meshfree nodes can be conveniently expressed as two successive first order gradient smoothing operations on the meshfree shape function, which facilitates a trivial numerical implementation. Subsequently, an employment of the second order smoothed gradients in the strong form of a given problem leads to the gradient smoothing meshfree collocation method purely using nodes as the collocation points. Based upon a local truncation error analysis, it is systematically shown that the proposed meshfree collocation method yields superconvergent solutions for odd degree basis functions. A key ingredient attributed to this superconvergence property is that the second order smoothed gradients meet the consistency conditions which go one order beyond the original basis degree of meshfree approximation. Another interesting fact is that the present formulation enables a convergent collocation scheme when the linear basis function is used in meshfree approximation, which is non-feasible in the conventional collocation formulation. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is validated by numerical examples for both potential and elasticity problems. Numerical results well demonstrate the superconvergence and higher efficiency of the present gradient smoothing meshfree collocation method.