Pseudo-divergence-free element free Galerkin method for incompressible fluid flow

Abstract

Incompressible modeling in finite elements has been a major concern since its early developments and has been extensively studied. However, incompressibility in mesh-free methods is still an open topic. Thus, instabilities or locking can preclude the use of mesh-free approximations in such problems. Here, a novel mesh-free formulation is proposed for incompressible flow. It is based on defining a pseudo-divergence-free interpolation space. That is, the finite dimensional interpolation space approaches a divergence-free space when the discretization is refined. Note that such an interpolation does not include any overhead in the computations. The numerical evaluations are performed using the inf–sup numerical test and two well-known benchmark examples for Stokes flow.