Airy-based static limit analysis of structures using stabilized radial point interpolation method

Abstract

This paper presents a novel formulation for static limit analysis of structures, for which the Airy stress function is approximated using stabilized Radial Point Interpolation Mesh-free method (RPIM). The stress field is determined as second-order derivatives of the Airy function, and the equilibrium equations are automatically satisfied a priori. The so-called Stabilized Conforming Nodal Integration (SCNI) is employed to ensure a present method is truly a mesh-free approach, meaning that all constraints in problems are only enforced at nodes. With the use of the Airy function, SCNI, and Second-Order Cone Programming (SOCP), the size of the resulting problem is kept to be minimum. Several benchmark problems having arbitrary geometries and boundary conditions are investigated. The obtained numerical solutions are compared with those available in other studies to perform the computational aspect of the proposed method.